Best Birthday Present EVAR
Yay! This is awesome. I know what I'm doing this afternoon!
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Yay! This is awesome. I know what I'm doing this afternoon!
In the mornings, after Calliope has eaten, we go around to the back yard. I suppose that, by definition, it can be called a yard. It's a area of land "next to, surrounding, or surrounded by a building or buildings," which "building(s)" could, I suppose, mean my house.
It could also be defined as a pit or perhaps a garden of nature's rage (D&D joke there... sorry, folks). Mainly, it's a huge cliff, complete with deadfall, stretching out for a good half of the property, toward one of the little trickles that feeds Bolin Creek. Trees tower over the house, poking out from the lush greenery below, pulling themselves up from the tendrils of ivy that hold them captive. It's quite a beautiful wood, in a "Mirkwood" fashion.
As Calli poops, taking a circuitous romp in and around the ivy before settling on a good spot, I stare out over that land. About 20 yards out, there's a clearing. The sun brightens it up, although you can still barely see it through the trees. It looks warm, even in these cool, damp autumn mornings.
This is a nice spot for us, here in Chapel Hill. We're thinking more and more about settling down. It's all dependent on the job and school situation, of course, but for now we're thinking of that big void that's up ahead of us, and I want to start putting down some lasting roots. From what I've seen of the world (and I haven't seen much, you know), here is as good a place as any. At some point, I guess you have to stop moving from one place to another if you really want to start with the stuff that happens after childhood and college, after marriage. If you want to follow these biological and social urges to spread your seed, to make a human for the future, to maybe give the world a tiny little spark that may change it some day. You have to find yourself out of doors, and just be happy with the room you're in.
I think if we buy the place, I'll put some steps going down into the valley. Cut away some of the ivy, landscape it a bit so we can add some variety, put in a shade garden, something like that. The path could lead down toward that clearing, and maybe if Natania lets me, I'll put a nifty little zip-line running down from the top of the hill, like we had when I was a kid. In the clearing, we'll put a playground or a clubhouse, maybe extend a dog run for Calli.
The dog finishes her business and hops away from it, darting back up the hill toward the house. I jog after her.
If you're really working, trying, doing your best to spend about an hour every day, after work or school or whatever, to write... and you hold aspirations to be a "writer," to maybe support yourself one day by your craft alone, does that make writing a hobby? Or is it something more? A passion? What differentiates a passion from a hobby? Is it going to bed every night, thinking of a story in which you're knee-deep, doing your best to tell? Is it doing something until your fingers bleed, or it's 3am and you didn't even notice that your wife went to bed without you? I don't know where I stand with any of that jazz. I enjoy writing, I love telling stories, I love to read stories, and when I sit down to write, I find myself astounded (and oftentimes frightened) by the process of unearthing them.
My job and school, though... they sap a lot of my energy from me. And writing, for me, has never been easy. I don't care what I'm working on, it's always work. And, sometimes, the last thing I need after 9 hours of work is more work. And so I go to other hobbies. The D&D campaign we've started recently with some friends, painting or playing with my Warhammer 40K miniatures, teaching myself Adobe Illustrator... these things are hobbies.
I'm not so sure writing is a hobby. I think maybe when hobbies consume your being, when, even while you're not actively engaging in them, you're thinking of them, then it's a passion. My problem isn't desire, because I have plenty of that. My issue, at the moment, is drive and commitment. And time. Talent is cheap, it's been said by professionals. To paraphrase further, "The only difference between a talented writer and a successful one is a whole hell of a lot of hard damn work."
If only I had more time in the day.
Hmm... that'd be a neat idea for a story...
Off to bed.