Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Choosing to be at Catherine Deveny’s The Gunnas Writing Masterclass was the first step. My year of responding to invitations and ideas by saying ‘why not’ with Gilly made for so many amazing moments and opportunities grasped, awesome tunes, mind blowing experiences, dodgy and flash hotels and memory making that it was time to pull my finger out and revisit that mantra of ‘why not’.
Choosing to be here was designating today day dot, ground zero, a line in the sand of ‘from this moment on, I choose to spend my time on this rather than that.’ The other stuff will get done or not, but its guaranteed the sun will still come up tomorrow. There’ll be something for dinner…or not. The dog hair will be vacuumed off the carpet…or not. Note to self, remembering some day-to-day practicalities will be useful, such as going to work to pay the rent. Ditto remembering to eat greens to keep the scurvy at bay. But choosing to start this process was such an important milestone for me.
Choosing to be here was, in a sad way, giving myself the permission I had decided I somehow needed. Permission to use the creative part of my brain, get my creative self moving, make things that look beautiful, feel beautiful and bring me and the people in my life joy. That joy could be in the form of a good-for-the gut kind of dinner for my wing woman and I; a mermaid tail dress up for a little friend or a carefully crafted message on a postcard to connect with someone far away. Spending a day at the writing masterclass was the start of giving myself the permission to choose to spend my time and energy playing with the intangibility of a collection of words to get it just so for a day. And writing – just writing! Choosing to be here was the first step, taking time out from my usual choices, more often than not unconscious choices that didn’t value creativity.
Choosing to spend a day doing something that my instinct was to name as indulgent – but was actually enriching – was such a gift. What a way to spend a day – hanging at Avid Bookshop (a non-chain megalopolous bookshop and one of my favourites), being outside on the back verandah (in itself, a treat for an office worker), with other people interested in words and creativity and sharing their work AND working with someone like Catherine Deveny. I have much gratitude for her choosing to spend her time with us and gratitude for her son’s desire to live in Japan that lead her to hold these workshops for Gunnas like me who are gunna get brave and get writing once we’ve perfected the art of procrastination. I’ve been gunna do it for so, so long and today I started.
www.notsonanna.blogspot.com.au