Working towards a personal goal as a member of a family unit can make you feel selfish at times.  You worry that you’re asking your family to sacrifice much in an effort to honour your own dreams. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to write books.  Earlier this year I came to a decision that if I didn’t have at least a draft completed that was at a stage I could send out enquiries to agents and publishing houses by the time I hit 40, then I should probably shut up about writing, that it wasn’t ever going to happen because I wasn’t passionate enough.

Sometime in February I started writing. Not a lot at first, maybe 500 words a couple of times a week. I would head downstairs to the communal sitting room complete with its fake fire and scratch out a few paragraphs; I didn’t want to jinx myself by aiming too high. I’ve always been able to churn out three or four thousand words to start a story, but the panic of trying to expand and write a whole novel often overwhelms me and I give up.  I set small goals for myself. I started off with the goal to write three times a week.  In April I got more ambitious. I worked out that if I wrote 360 words 25 times in a month I would make a 9,000 word count goal.  In August I worked towards the goal of 12,000 words, missing it by only 800; I achieved it in September.

Spending time writing means that I can’t spend time playing with Bronwen at the park. It means I can’t take her for a bike ride; I can’t sit down and watch a movie with Matthew or cook delicious meals or cakes on the weekend. It means that I must monitor my down time and ensure that I focus on achieving word counts, sometimes working through the night to reach them.  Most of the work has been written by the light of the TV in my bedroom so that I don’t disturb others slumbering and often its only very late at night when everyone was in bed that I finally get the silence I crave to hear the words flow through my head.

When I was struggling with the whole home school or government education for Bronwen over the summer a couple of friends suggested that by sending her to school I would be able to write during  the day.  When Bronwen made the decision that she wanted to go to school, I made a vow to be very strict and spend each 2 ½ hours each school day writing – no internet! In the first full week she was able to attend (after the falling mirror and almost severed toe deal) I wrote 5000 words. It was then I made a decision that I would write 1000 words minimum every day Bronwen was at school as a way of honouring the time she is away from me.  We must make the oddest couple; when I pick her up from the bus I ask her how her day was and she asks me if I got lots of writing done.

Over the weekend Matthew decided to go out and buy me a new mp3 player as the      i-pod that I’ve had for five, possibly six years now has become infuriating in that despite having spend $80 on a new battery just last year, it now can’t carry a charge longer than 20 minutes before it starts flashing an empty battery symbol at me and suggests ever so helpfully that I should shut down the machine or risk losing all my music.  Although it wasn’t part of the plan, Bronwen decided that she wanted to go out with her Daddah. Now I have to share that it is not usual for her to choose shopping with her Dad, but we decided to not make a fuss about it after having warned her that it could be boring; she was insistent.

I viewed the time alone as perfect for housework.  With the dishwasher unloaded, I had one load of laundry in the drier and was about to start the washing machine for another. I had already scrubbed the toilet bowl till it sparkled and was about to get a start on the shower.  It was about 45 minutes later when Matthew called to share what Bronwen had just explained to him. She had decided that she should go with him so that I could have some quiet time; some time to write.  She had gone out with her Daddy so that I would have some uninterrupted time to concentrate on my writing.

After talking to Bronwen and having her explain to me that I should be writing; after getting a little teary that my little girl was so incredibly generous of spirit I gave up on all the other chores I had planned  to do and sat down to write another 1000 words towards my novel.  It was my way of honouring her sacrificial actions. Her belief in me spurs me on for another week.

I’ve been complaining (somewhat bitterly at times) that I have not have a space of my own in this ‘new again’ home in Ottawa. Not that I had my own space in Melbourne – far from it in fact, but here I feel I am allowed to crave somewhere for my own peace of mind. To have an area that is mine, a place that my creativity can rest in.

 But there is precious little space in a two bedroom apartment for private space. Having a space to call ones own is a luxury that until now, I have not been allowed. Bronwen takes over the master bedroom because the only working TV is there and heaven help us if we miss an episode of Mr Maker; she will be an artist of some sort one day, of that I’m sure. Matthew is in the second bedroom with his computer, and I have, until now, been relegated to sitting at the kitchen table, spreading out my work and scraping back up everything I deem important in the goal of creativity for every family meal. It has been an issue of frustration and of loneliness for me. I think, I if I am honest with myself, I’ve been yearning for space of my own for years.

The other day Matthew lugged up from the basement and set up a small desk for me in the family room. The desk is made of redwood polished to a high gleam. The top opens up to reveal a green leather writing base that is embossed with beautiful gold filigree work. There are small compartments that can hide any number of notes or books. A single pen drawer has a solid brass button handle to hide away pens and tubes of glue. I find my hand gliding over the top of the desk, feeling the silky wood and the earthy grain of the leather. On the inside of the desk, there are criss-crosses of elastic that have been nailed in with brass tacks, to slide in postcards, or words of wisdom and encouragement. The hardware of the desk is brass, giving it an old world look that stands somewhat formally, but not unpleasantly against the dark stained wooden IKEA bookshelves that groan under the weight of my embroidery book collection.

The view from the other side of the kitchen table was much more pleasant, with the distant hills covered in trees. The only view afforded me here at my new desk is of the freeway in the distance, the other apartment building and the rooftops of homes. I confess that its not so pretty, the smooth geometrical brown roof tiles and the creamy brown bricks with flashes of white balcony edges and a swirling ribbon of black that carries scurrying multi-coloured beetles along the busy journey of their days. But even this view offers its own inspiration in that there is nothing to distract me as I sit and work on my story writing, or type up blog entries. I have more than enough daylight to work comfortably, but nothing to draw my eyes away from the work at hand.

OK. It’s not a room that I can close the door on and be alone. It’s not a place I can pile well read and loved or soon to be loved books around me, with baskets of embroidery materials, skeins of thread and several UFO’s (Un Finished Objects) projects scattered safely around. Buts it’s a desk, with a top that I can close. It’s a place I can put my notebooks on and write without staring at the crumbs left over from Bronwen’s morning breakfast toast. It’s a place that I can learn to love as my small space of serenity, or poetry or manic energy. It’s my small space in this small space of life.

 And I think, when I become better acquainted with this space that hold my small desk, I may well just fall completely and utterly in love with it.

I have always had an inner kernel of sassy in me, just waiting to be set free from the confines of societal expectations, but it wasn’t until recently that I really started to allow my sassy to start expressing itself.

Not so with my daughter. My daughter is fabulously sassy already.

Stating the obvious, but here is proof.

Today Matthew took her downtown to get his health care card renewed at City Hall, and as you can imagine on a busy grey work day in Ottawa, people are grouchy, going about their business as if they are the only people on the planet who matter, who have their own agendas and want their own way – NOW.

As Matthew and Bronwen were crossing a street, a taxi driver got sick of waiting for a (4 years old  in 15 days!) child to walk across the street… so he blasted the horn at them to either try and scare Bronwen into walking faster or to make her Daddah pick her up and run the rest of the way.

But my little girl was having none of that! No, no, no.

She swung her head sharply around, gave the taxi driver a withering look that can only be described as saying “How Dare You!”  in the haughtiest aristocratic way and replied… “Beep! Beep! To you too!” and then, without turning back even once, she kept on walking to the beat of her own drum.

I couldn’t stop laughing with delight as Matthew relayed the story to me over the phone. Bronwen  is the living example of Kinda Sassy; she really  is sass on legs!

Are you anything like me? You look at a small task and think…

 “Ooh, I reckon* could knock that off in fifteen minutes. Yeah…  I’ve got plenty of time before I have to start…. insert any urgent, time sensitive task that must be done – like , say, cooking dinner —-> HERE.”

Except that the small task you thought you could ‘knock off’ was not so innocently small. Nohoho… it was bigger than you imagined. It was even bigger than you thought you couldn’t imagine it to be. It was actually a Big Job disguised as a small task that was always going to balloon out to take up two and a half hours of your time and still leave little pieces of undoneness hanging out everywhere to annoy you.

Like cleaning up a small section of book shelf.

Alright … keep the sniggering to yourself please. I know, since when was cleaning a book shelf ever a small task? But I thought, in all honesty, that it was going to be a small task. Simply clean out the folders I had there, sort the items (keep or toss), wipe down the shelf, and bobs your uncle, fresh, workable space for my growing assortment of current paper work.

Except that cleaning out the standing files meant I had to move some books (I want, no, I need my synonym book and my dictionary within easy reach!) from one shelf to another… which meant that those other books had to be moved …. and that meant moving the sewing machine …. and wouldn’t Bronwen’s books be better on that shelf rather than the shelf right behind me?….  and maybe I should move my fashion books up to this shelf instead of down on the bottom shelf especially if I want to think seriously about starting a fashion blog ….  and ooooh, look at this coffee table book on Cartier jewellery…..

You get the idea. 

And it’s not often that when you undertake such a large amount of work are you tangibly rewarded for your effort.  Just a few weeks ago I finished “The Secret Life of Bees” and enjoyed it so much that I felt the urge to go to the book store, plonk some cash down and buy the next book by Sue Monk Kid, “The Mermaid Chair”. Except that with the bus strike that held Ottawa captive for seven weeks, I have been put on temporary hold of sorts on my little job and have no money coming in, which meant that fulfilling the urge to buy a new book could not be satisfied.

And here is where the serendipity part of the title falls in place. Wouldn’t you know it? As I cleaned out the shelf on the music book case (called because it has the music system on it and not because we are musically gifted) to put Bronwen’s books there I came across a copy of “The Mermaid Chair” that I had obviously bought before I went back home to Australia all those years ago; I had totally forgotten about it.  But here it sits, shiny and new, just waiting for me to read it (when I find the time to make a pile of peanut butter sandwiches for Bronwen to eat and organise a few bottles of water), and all because I decided to do one small task before I cooked dinner one night.

So here is a new challenge for this blog. Not that this is the only style of challenges will be in the future, (I’m not quite ready to reveal that side of things yet,) but I did want to create a fun challenge!  Tell me, what small task have you been putting off because you have a gut feeling it might turn into a Big Job? Can you to do it in the next two weeks?  Are you ready to accept the challenge and then come back and tell me about your serendipitous findings?

*Australian slang term meaning You bet! Absolutely!