Doing What I Really Want

Lesley's Blog

Grandma Moses started to paint at a very grand old age and she is just one of many people who, in their later years, have decided to do just what they really want and love it.
 
Last Monday I went to the house of a good friend to see her 78 year old spouse's pottery that he had created over the last 5 months of taking classes for the first time. He had always done wonderful woodwork but this was his first attempt at pottery and it was amazing.

I also went to listen to my friend's poetry. Although she has read lots of poetry over the years, being a great love of hers, this year she decided to take a class in poetry writing. She, like her spouse, is in her 70's and it is her first poetry writing class. Her poems, like his pottery, are amazing. They are beautiful, funny, moving and so much more. They both are loving what they are doing.

My sister at age 70 has just started to write a novel. She has always been very creative with a variety of artistic endeavors including painting in water colors and making beautiful quilts but writing is a relatively new creative love. The book on ancestry that she has worked on for three or so years is mostly complete so now she is researching and writing a fiction book.

And I too have started to write a novel at age 67. It is great fun when my sister and I exchange ideas and keep each other going at those time we are losing faith in ourselves a little. I love that so many individuals in their 60's and 70's and older are trying new creative things and finding what they really love to do.



(A lamb in Spring, in the British countryside, where Maggie and I love to hike together. Seeing the new lambs at that time of year, always reminds me that creativity is about new birth for us.)

 

But the other issue for me is more of a personal one. I have enjoyed writing for several years but I was trained as a scientist in Britain and took no English classes after high school so have no fantasies about being a published author. My writing skills are simply not good enough. Over the years I have toyed with the idea of writing a novel but felt that I needed to use my time in more productive ways and that the time it would take to write an unpublishable novel would be wasted. I focused instead on more constructive endeavors. The idea that I could do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, without it benefiting anyone else or making money (although the latter was much less important that the former) was completely foreign to me although I would certainly encourage my clients to do just that.

In the last few months I have had a lovely change of attitude and heart. I love writing this novel and doing all the interesting research. My actual writing still had not improved so it is not for the consumption of others. It is simply for me and the enjoyment of doing it (and learning so much along the way). In my mind I have a ten year plan so, unlike in my "former" life , I feel no pressure to finish it in a "timely" manner and do something constructive with it. It feels so releasing and delicious. 

Maybe we have to wait until a certain time in our lives to develop such a new attitude but I would encourage you all to not wait quite as long as I did.