Food for the Soul

I’m just going through everyone’s emails and checking the Facebook Rafflecopter, and I’ll start sending you all of your books tomorrow. I’m not sure why I did that Rafflecopter to be honest, because I’ll be very happily emailing copies of all of my scribbles to anyone who requested them anyway, and with the greatest of pleasure. SPAMMER ALERT. 😀 I’m at risk of planting myself headfirst into the carpet right now in super snoozemode though, so please be nice and forgive me if I only get to comments tomorrow.

I don’t ever listen to music when I’m in my office, and definitely not when I’m writing no matter where I happen to be. This last week has been quite a rush for me though. I’m that cool kind of tired where everything aches just a little, but it’s worth it, and I’m well pleased with myself for not caving and running away entirely. I’ve got through thousands of emails and bits and pieces, I’m finally nearing the top of my catch up pile for the first time in months, and today is a very smiley kind of day for me because I can feel an epic lot of scribbling coming on as well. So I reckoned that a cool song or two in the background wouldn’t hurt – just for today.

The horde sat really quietly for a while (after almost hitting the roof when the first song I loaded from Youtube started with a REALLY loud advert), and then the concert began. The weavers generally sing all day anyway, in between heroic pretend battles with lots of tiny but outraged screeches, and trying to bounce on each other’s heads. The music caused a ceasefire this morning, and they landed wing to wing on my keyboard, stared at it for a bit, and then joined in the fun. Proper concert in the park. Even the parrots warbled along. I probably wouldn’t really have taken much notice of the actual music if I could get at my computer, but my weavers don’t take crap from anyone when they’re doing whatever it is that they want to be doing, not even me, so I just sat back and watched them for a while.

It suddenly dawned on me that I’ve gone from being someone who used to listen to music a lot to someone who only listens to it now when I’m driving somewhere. And then it occurred to me that the same applies to sketching, painting and inventing new munchies in my kitchen. Those loves of mine have pretty much taken a back seat for a while now. Then I listened to a slightly mournful – but still gorgeous – song, and thought that those things aren’t really important parts of my life anymore. Writing gives me the biggest joy, and that’s all I should be concentrating on right now.

Funny thing though. Sitting back doing nothing except watching my little feathery guys have a ball and sing their hearts out gave me just as much joy, and I realised that I don’t have to define myself in any way, or do only one thing. Fair enough – singing along myself wasn’t an option – even I don’t want to hear that kind of racket. Beany the parrot chomped me on the nose the last time I had a go – I think she thought I’d been possessed by a foul unmusical demon.

I loved every minute of listening to it though, even after I regained control of the keyboard and got back to work. I don’t want to get old and decrepit and look back wishing that I’d done more of all the different things that make me happy, and I’m just realising that sometimes being in too much of a rush to achieve a goal could make you focus too hard on one single thing while life rushes right past you, and you lose a bit of who you really are. You can forget sometimes that you’re actually alive, right here, and right now, and that you can actually do anything you want to do. Anything at all – really. Not to mention that you could get taken out by a passing meteorite or miniscule alien spaceship piloted by super-sophisticated gnats with really cool hairdos at any second, and then you wouldn’t get to do anything at all anymore, and all this cultivating of bunions on your bum would be for nothing. Besides – now that I think about it, you have to live life if you want to write about it. Maybe some of us scribblers should stop for just a little while now and then, and add some long forgotten loves right back into our lives, because music and food and doodling a cool picture, or any other thing that makes you happy should never be lost as you zoom along your three score and ten, for any reason, person, or goal at all. It’s allowed to stop and smell any old thing you like now and then.

And for the boys – don’t ever take her for granted….