ME TIME ….

An extract from the yet to be completed Fake it till you make it …..           By Hayley Muirhead

Me time …

Shew …7.5minutes …. That beat yesterday by .3 seconds …. not bad, not too bad.  Some days are like this, I must just enjoy them.  Running smoothly like an automatic silver Porsche and not like an old, manual, mustard / shit-colour Passat hatch back that belches smoke, refuses to start and chugs along – like my first cars after school. But I am always waiting for that lamp post that is on his (of course it is male …. Wait and see what it does to me and then it will make sense) evening stroll crossing the road just as I am speeding home. 

I am never far from my poor country girl upbringing, living like a hostage to the weather and market demands.  I often think back to those stacks of pumpkins that my dad had planted, grown and harvested – ready to catch the Christmas market and try to get a jump on other suppliers only to realise…… or that hail-storm that flattened our crops on New Year’s day…. or those ever-present droughts that circle like vultures and are never far away.

I have an hour before I head out on mom-taxi duty some time for me to get into my writing and put some of the ideas that have been tangoing in my head on paper. 

                60 minutes ….

So the process to get ready and comfortable begins…. Clear the desk 7 minutes ….. make coffee (because as we all know, good writers are always languishing over their screens with a cup of something to keep their hands busy …) go to the loo 4 minutes …. Check that whatsup is clear (oh look some messages … got to reply … can’t blue tick and not respond) 17 minutes…

I often wonder, why I find “my likes” so hard to follow through with?  I claim to love writing, painting, photography, walking …. Yet I often find myself doing odd chores, that are certainly not urgent, and procrastinate my “passions”.  This is one of the many conundrums in my life, along with trying to keep my house a calm and peaceful beige with splashes of grey but ending up with space that makes Austen Powers fade into oblivion.

Right 32 minutes left ..make them count.

I write in capital letters CHARACTERISTIC:  (PWS Proper Writers Stuff: I am building up my character before I start my novel ….) and bash out 20 characteristics that are in my head and been banging on the bars shouting ….LET ME OUT, but after that …. Nothing

Right 5 minutes left …

MOS (Middle off-spring) enters the room. But entering is a process not one single motion … first physically wrestles with the door handle … pulls then has an ah ha moment and pushes the door with herculean force.  Striding into the room and asking MMMOOOMMMM is one single movement then standing there with a toothbrush in hand and toothpaste foaming at the mouth … It is midday. Some issue with a shirt and its present location – as if it has a GPS PIN locator – how am I meant to know.  But in this instance (a rare occurrence) I do and can lead him to it with minimum directions and thought.  What a relief not too many decisions used up in that process …..

                Right 3 minutes left … oh stuff it … I will carry on next time …