Last week my mum reminded me that I don't have to do everything in life in the next few years. Or specifically that I don't have to work myself into a professional writing gig and out of the public service right now. Actually I think what she may have been thinking was that I could put off the hard work coming up in my Masters next year. This time, when my kids are small, is only short and maybe I should just focus on them for the time being, give the other stuff a rest for a few years*.
Of course, that's easier said than done - as I pointed out, I can't actually defer the masters any more, and the next two years, while I'm off work, is really the only chance I have to finish it. I can't go back to work *and* look after two small children *and* do 2/3 of a full time load of a post graduate work (and the part of the course I will be doing from mid 2007-mid 2008 can't be done as less than 2/3 of a full time load). Some people might be able to do it, but not me. I think I have that much self-knowledge.
So even if I could defer, I simply can't do it later on - not unless I have another baby and get more maternity leave, which would sort of defeat the purpose of putting it off.
And, if I don't use the work I am doing for this masters to push me into more writing - if I don't keep putting it into practice - then the chances of it actually moving me in the direction of quitting my day job are slim. I need to keep building on the learnings (to use some public service speak), if they are to be any use.
But. It is true that this intense time with my children will not come again. So the really important thing for me to remember, and which I honestly do forget sometimes, is that if I don't have a novel written (a publishable one) by the time I'm forty - well, so what? I have this arbitrary time in my hear (forty) when aparently everything must be done by. I'm guessing it will be easier to let go of that deadline as I approach it (I let go of the 35 deadline, which meant no Vogel Prize, pretty easily), but it might help my stress levels over the next few years if I could let go of it now. Maybe.
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*NB I may be misquoting my mother, but for the purposes of this post, it doesn't matter.
