Juggling for Beginners

Today's video clip from the love god who is Jools Holland embodies for me the reality of juggling work, home and creative life. You have the solid bass line part of the duet, (housekeeping, caring for family, earning a living), and you have the free-form line that makes you want to get up and dance, (writing, painting, acting, loving - whatever your passion is). They are part and parcel of the same melody - it's life, but some days it feels like you need four hands to juggle it. The pay off is that when it's in synch it is sublime.

There's an interesting post over at Tessa's place today about Neanderthal attitudes to working women. Perhaps I am feeling under more pressure than usual but OMG are there still men out there who think it is easy juggling work and family life? If the women out there are anything like me it is a constant case of feeling you are not enough - not a good enough mother, not a good enough wife, not a good enough businesswoman - and not nearly as good a writer as you would be if you could actually carve out time for yourself to work on what you love rather than dealing with, oh, you know - living.

As we commented the other night, those of us re-reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes feel like we are being given a kick up our creative backsides. It's what you need once in a while. It's what keeps you moving forward. Everyone's favourite blogging agent Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown San Fran has recently had a Positivity Week which has had a similar effect on a lot of people. He came up with ten commandments for a Happy Writer:

1. Enjoy the present
2. Maintain your integrity
3. Recognize the forces that are outside of your control
4. Don’t neglect your friends and family
5. Don't Quit Your Day Job
6. Keep up with publishing industry news.
7. Reach out to fellow writers
8. Park your jealousy at the door
9. Be thankful for what you have
10. Keep writing

Keep writing - keep playing - keep juggling. That sense of forward momentum is what's going to get us through all this. I named my protagonist in 'All the Lovely Ruined Things' Maya because I had just read several of Maya Angelou's books, and I sensed she was a survivor, someone on the move, just like her. 'Still I Rise' is as much a poem for today as when it was written - enjoy (and here's one in the eye for the Neanderthals):

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?'
Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

TODAY'S PROMPT: There was a great book recently called 'Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me' by Lucia Van der Post. Her focus was 'grace and elegance', but what do you wish your mother or father had told you? What was the hardest lesson you have learnt? What single piece of advice would you pass on to the next generation to save them learning it the hard way? I hope that a long and successful career writing lies ahead for me but if I do nothing else in this life than nurture a girl and boy who believe they can both rise while loving, respecting and working equally with the men and women around them then that will have been a good life. What do you think the secret of being a happy writer, or good parent is? Can we - do you want - to have it all?