I'm slowly crawling back from a bad stomach flu. I knew it was going around, but I was hoping that it might skip me this time around since I got so sick with it a few years ago. I will say, that it wasn't even half as bad as that time, but it still knocked me out for a couple of days.
So, today as I'm starting to get my sea legs back, I'm hanging out at home drinking tea, and I'm still only comfortable eating miso with noodles. I'm also watching documentaries. The good thing about getting rid of cable and just subscribing to the movie channels, besides saving money, is the amount of incredible documentaries they make available. So far today I watched a Betty White documentary on Netflix, and on Hulu, a biography of Toni Morrison and another documentary about the filming of Aretha Franklin's gospel album in 1971.
Boy, if you ever want to question exactly where you are in your life in your mid-fifties, just watch those three documentaries. Those women accomplished so much by the time they were my age. Just to be clear, I am not disappointed about where I am right now. I am very happy. I've never really cared about being famous, I just want to be able to adeptly create by writing and painting and drawing and photography, the things and ideas I have in my head.
Of course, the problem with that in my past, was finding the time and money. I have more time and money right now than I've ever had in my life, so that means that the other problem for me (as it has been my entire life) is walking that line between balance and focus. Mrs. Parsons, my 11th grade English teacher once told me that we always make time for the things we love. But what if we love so many things that we don't have time to do any one thing very well? I suppose this is where my attention deficit issues come in to play as well...
What if I chose one thing, say, writing and I threw all of my energy, and time, and passion into it? Then I couldn't really read, or run, or bike, or swim, or cross country ski, or garden, or cook, or paint, or have fun adventures with my husband and kids, or draw, or fix up the house, or photograph stuff, or (most importantly) mess with my cats. Just look at all of things I'd be missing out on? If I ask myself if writing well is worth giving up all of those other things, I'd have to say, I don't think so.
Maybe that's the difference between someone who is a genius at what they do (I'm not disregarding talent). They have to give up so many other things to get there.
I once had a friend who told me, "You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want." As you know, I hate restrictions. So, what that means for me, is that I may never be a genius at recreating what's in my head onto a page or canvass or on film, and if you could see what was in my brain, you might think that was a good thing. Which leaves me with skimming the surface of a lot of different things. I can choose to invest more time on any of those things at different phases of my life (which I have), and then move on to the next thing. My grubby paws will be all over the place leaving my dirty fingerprints on all kinds of different disciplines. Will I be disappointed with myself for not getting really good at one thing? On and off, probably, but I would most likely be way more disappointed by missing out on trying everything I can get to and having all of those weird and wonderful and messy adventures.
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