Avoiding Ourselves

I admit it; I haven't written diddly squat in more than a year. I have some moderately good excuses for that: I got married, my father has been sick, I'm running two businesses and helping my husband market his. Yep, I'm busy. I hadn't really thought about my lack of writing until yesterday, when another writer said something to me that made me pause...

She was telling me about a writing retreat she went on this year. She's been struggling to get her memoir on paper, so she went away for a week to focus on it. In the cute little town where she was sequestered, she found a yarn shop and purchased a ton of yarn. She then spent the first two days of her writing retreat doing nothing but knitting. She hadn't knitted anything in almost 20 years, and apparently couldn't wait a moment longer to pick up the needles.

She laughed when she told the story and said "it's amazing what we'll do to avoid ourselves." She was not letting me off the hook.

I'm not sure that will be enough to motivate me to write in the coming year, although it was enough to motivate me to post an entry here, which I haven't done in more than a month. I continue to struggle with my creative outlets, not sure when I'm really avoiding myself and when I've just got other (legitimate) priorities. Perhaps that will be the thing to figure out in 2008.