The Waiting Game

Rethinking my life. All the old certitudes and cliches falling away. A new beginning each morning.

When I first sobered up I was very grateful. I was grateful for any work that came my way and I took on anything offered to me. It wasn’t a ‘gratitude’ problem as such, but it may have been naive. Overwork and lack of boundaries and trouble asking for payment left me in a bad financial position. And I was not doing what I wanted to do, was not writing what I wanted to write. All the newly sober energy and passion was being thwarted and going to waste.

Now there is that sense of hiatus again, another moment of decision. And again I do not feel ready, am unsure of what I want. But I do know what I do not want. I don’t want corporate media. I don’t want to write things I don’t believe in. That sounds almost simple-minded but it is how I feel, sitting here with a hollow feeling in my stomach, still in shock and feeling I have betrayed myself at  some point this last year. Or perhaps not. Egotism is very fond of taking all the blame and responsibility. I just want to begin again, this time with meaning and purpose.

A friend and neighbour coming to give me a large enamel bowl of ripening pears, cautioing me not to eat them before they take on that golden-green glaze and honey smell. Smiling at me with delight and anticipated pleasure, his eyes crinkled up. He has cancer of the prostate and is 78 years old. My eyes fill with tears of sheer gratitude. There is another way of living beyond all the nonsense, the greed and stupidity. And it is there, right in front of me. The pears ripening on the kitchen table in the morning sunlight.

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