Resolution/ Really Virginia?

It is 6:42 on New Year's Eve and Kirk, having worked 24 hours yesterday/last night and who is working 24 hours tomorrow and 24 hours Sunday, is passed out snoring in front of the fire place, as he has been since 11:30 a.m.  As waking people annoys me, especially him, I think I will let him sleep on the floor all night.  Anja is asleep too, which leaves me to myself again and also leaves me thinking.

For one reason or another, I have been thinking a lot about Virginia Woolf lately and will have to read a few of her books and essays again to get a handle on the particulars, but I am thinking about a room of one's own, the often intolerable state of being female in her time, her resolved and purposeful end, etc, etc.  I admire her, her writing, and her courage immensely, but sometimes, wholly unfairly, I think "Really, Virginia? You had a room of your own.  You, by purpose or accident, had no kids!"  Perhaps I am just exceptionally sensitive to this with a not-quite-four-year-old and a baby on the way, or perhaps I am just reverting to old patterns.  In other words, it is very easy to blame situations (med school, residency, having to work a job I dislike rather intensely at the moment ya da ya da) and people (who I created/gestated, quite intentionally, myself) for that yawping black room somewhere in the soul.  It is also another thing to know there is a room and not be able, or to be too lazy, to find a way out of it, which is what I think I've been doing for a year now.  Or, rather, I've been in the hole since I was pregnant with Anja, but have only been aware of the room for the last year. 

What clarified this room-dwelling was watching videos of Anja as a baby that Kirk found the other night and realizing that I've only let myself remember the bleak moments of her babyhood, when I often felt lonely and overwhelmed, and not the lovely moments.  These videos of this beautiful, happy baby shocked me becuase  I've always thought I've been good at remembering things - not the details, per se - but the overall colour or mood of the experience.  But, as these videos show, clearly I am wrong sometimes.  Whatsmore, I've allowed this bleak feeling to overtake my memories of her early life, because I never wrote anything to counter it.  Not the momentousness, not even the minutae. 

I never wrote. 

And so, so much feels lost to me.  I have been stuck in a room that has, really, trapped me. 

So 2010 is, despite and perhaps because of the little bean who is set to sprout in June, about creating a room of my choosing, largely, of carving a psychological space where I can create.  I have felt so terribly uncreative for the past five years, and this results in food addictions, in feelings of constant irritation and guilt and of wasting time.  (I heard a radio interview this year about a woman who, much like me, feels constant guilt.  For instance, she was in a sauna and determined she should stay for a set period of time.  When she grew too hot, she wanted to leave, but felt guilty for not sticking to her original plan.  So she argued with herself for a while, and when she finally did leave the sauna, berated herself for ruining her sauna experience with guilt.  This is my constant interior dialogue in a nutshell.) 

And maybe creating is about putting my own stamp on the world before I die, maybe it is just about the act of creating itself.  Maybe it is just about owning up to the fact that I need to do what I was put on earth to do. 

What does carving space mean in practical terms?  Strangely, or not so strangely, it means re-embracing daily yoga practice.  I wrote my entire first book and a second unpublished book during the year I discovered yoga.  There has to be some connection there. Also, I can't run anymore during pregnancy because of pelvic issues and icy winter.   More than that, it means writing every single day  until the baby comes (then, a gentle reassessment.)  Art = habit.  I know this, but I need to know this.  I don't care what I write, whether it is the blog (I am having existential questions about the nature of blogging - mainly, I don't have a project, so to speak - do I need a project?), or poems, or non-fiction or fiction, good or bad.  I will do my exercises and hopefully something will come out of it. 

It is about not being fearful.  It is about stopping wasting time. It is about a room of my own.  So here's to Virginia on the eve of the new year.



p.s.
L.M. Montgomery's last manuscript about the Blythes (i.e. Anne) was published in the fall.  I will read and review!