- focus -

The summer seems to have been temporarily replaced by autumn, but the cooler air makes for easier thinking, I feel, so some thoughts about stuff.

For a while now, I've been hoping to find a way of earning a living by doing what I'm good at, as in the past it has proved impossible for me to hold down a job doing things that mean absolutely nothing to me. Before being a mum I was a secretary (me?!), an office-clerk, child minder, worker in a pickles-factory, general assistant in the head office of an opticians... None has given me the feeling of fulfilment or the idea that I was actually doing something useful. On the contrary - in the opticians, many of the subscriptions for the glasses that i was supposed to find in the tiny storeroom in a small corner of the humongous warehouse (inhabited by three odd types who spent their day slicing bits of the lenses so that they fitted into the frames, deeply contented by their vocation) went belly up, as i kept mixing the details up and the work had to be re-done, making for yet longer waiting times for the people who had ordered the glasses. While being a secretary, i ended up writing children's stories on the word processor and made a few thousand pictures on the blotting-pad i was supposed to write down appointments on. Dreamy, they called me in one of my valuation talks (which was weird in itself, because it meant that i was there long enough to be valued...). Need to learn to focus... Point is: i focussed al right, but on the wrong things...

Since being a mother and bound to the house (which sounds way more dramatic than it actually is - i relish it...) I've had years to think about what i want to do. And it had taken until three years ago, when i joined an art-class in town, that i dawned on me: arts. Whichever form, whichever technique - i like it, i can do it, i focus... I may not be the next Van Gogh or J.K. Rowling, but the doing of it has made me realise that i've been too bothered about doing what i thought i was supposed to do ('do whatever job comes along, which some people haven't got the luxury of doing, of course...).

So, when the last birthday of Polly's teacher came along, and i managed to forget to buy her a present, i had the inspired idea of making a mandala for her, frame it and give that as the class-present. Bit cheeky, and it still took me a bit of persuading to actually do it, but when i presented the bill to the school, they weren't fussed. And so now I'm being paid for doing something that i love doing. A few more orders have come in, and there's the merest inkling of what might be...

Waaah!!! Whatever next...