midweek weekend feeling

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Journalist, Journalist Sydney J. Harris, quote, Sydney J. Harris, weekend feeling, writing

Yesterday I handed in my pre-Christmas assignment for my novel writing class (8000+ words) and somehow that created the strange sense of weekend within me. And I don’t know why.

It’s not as if there still isn’t lots to do, I still have to edit and grade my students magazine work, I sill have two to three short-stories to hand in by the 20th and I have a whole list of other  things to complete before the week is out.

Nevertheless, yesterday I somehow ended up sitting in front of the fire indulging is some afternoon TV and knitting socks. And today I still can’t shake that weekend feeling, that sense that it’s a Saturday and I can do as I please.

Maybe it’s because I lost my weekend to writing and now my mind is demanding some time to relax. Or maybe it’s the windy weather outside that is making the indoors so attractive.

Either way, after finding myself reading the same sentence over and over again (not taking it in) or gazing out of the window at nothing one too many times I have decided to cut my losses. And since I do have a few books I still need to read (I am calling it ‘research’ for my masters) I think my afternoon will be spent curled up on my armchair with a cup of tea and a story.

And who knows maybe that will help inspire me and I’ll get some writing done later – after all the day isn’t over yet.

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it

Journalist Sydney J. Harris

impossible possibilities

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cereal boxes, desires, dreams, Elvis, Elvis Presley, hopes, impossible, Journalist, miscellaneous, pencil pen, possibilities, random, singer, thoughs

When I was small, really small maybe four or five I wanted to be Elvis Presley, not be like him but be him. I loved him so much and could sing all his songs off by heart, I even tried to perfect the lip curl, the hip bumps and manly swagger. All to no effect as my blond-hair-blue-eyed-curly-haired-cuteness always overruled my imperfect Elvis imitation.

But then so did my desire to be a journalist, another dream of mine since the age of four, I have no idea if I thought I could be Elvis the singing reporter or if I was going to lead a double life, writer by day Elvis by night. Anyway, I use to pull up my miniature chair and table to sit in front of the telly and write down what the news was telling me, even though I couldn’t write and understood very little of what was being said. In crafts I would turn cereal boxes into odd looking typewriters and spend hours upon hours taking notes in squiggly hand writing that no one could read, not even me.

I also wanted to have dimples, so I sat for hours in class pushing the pointy end of a pencil, pen or even ruler into my cheeks in the complete and utter belief that one day the indent would stay. I would have been happy with just one but all I ended up with was sore, stained cheeks, but surprisingly no lead poisoning.

Shirley Temple was another idol of mine. I thought that if she could make it as a star so could I. It never occurred to me that she had been at her peak in the 30s and 40s and that she lived in Hollywood. I really believed that if I sat on the swing in our back-garden in Dublin and sang at the top of my voice an agent would discover me and I would be the next singing and dancing six-year-old it-girl.

I never became Elvis or a new Miss Temple, I really don’t sing that well, I still don’t have dimples and a star is only something I see at night and sadly my handwriting hasn’t really improved much either. Today my dreams have changed although being a journalist  and working in the media is the one that has always stayed and I’ve pursued with varying degrees of success.

But when I look back on what I use to believe was possible and what impossibilities I have at times overcome I think is is well worth believing in the impossible and make it possible, dreaming big and defying impossible possibilities.