I write because I’m free….

If you’ve ever watched “Sister Act 2”, there’s a part where Sr Mary Clarence tells Lauryn Hill’s Character, 
I went to my mother who gave me this book called Letters to A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. He’s a fabulous writer. A fellow used to write to him and say: I want to be a writer, please read my stuff. And Rilke says to this guy, don’t ask me about being a writer. If when you wake up in the morning you can think of nothing but writing, then you’re a writer. I’m gonna say the same thing to you. If you wake up in the morning and you can’t think of anything but singing first, then you’re supposed to be a singer girl.”
I have carried this quote around, in my heart, for years. I wake up every morning wanting to write, I spend the day thinking “wow that would be a lovely story or book”. I go to sleep thinking about writing, and yet, for some reason, I’m terrified to just letting go and simply…writing.
I’ve had two seriously busy weeks. The whole being a full-time, fully functioning ad participating employee AND being a full time awake mom keeps me so busy. Roz’s new little teeth are trying to make their way out and while Krys and I are very excited for her, it makes for even more that usual awakenings at night. I know, how can a baby that wakes up so often already, wake up even more, right? The answer is, yes she can! Well, I’m blaming the million times waking on the teeth, on the nine month growth spurt, on her practising all her new moves in her sleep…but really, does it matter? The end result is that I wake up several times each night and am a complete zombie in the morning. But I’ve been assured by many moms who’ve gone through this that this too shall pass, so I’m hanging on.
But Monday night, she gave me a complete scare. I was dozing in my bed when I heard a strange gurgling the retching sound coming from Roz’s cot. I looked over and the poor little thing was covered in sick and trying to sit up, all groggy and moon eyed. Well, did I panic or what! I took her out, rinsed her mouth, face, hair (which was covered in gooey chunks of half digested food – lovely) checked her temperature, and Krys and I sat up and waited you make sure she went back to sleep okay, which she did. At three am, I woke up to the same, only this time she had thrown up all her milk and again, was really quiet and trying to sit up. I didn’t want to wake Krys up because he leaves for work much earlier than I do, so I cleaned her up and put her in the bed beside me. She was asleep in about ten minutes, but I stayed up worrying and just watching her cute little face for the next forty five minutes. She was tossing and turning the rest of the night and I was waking up with each turn, worrying that she was getting sick, or choking on her vomit, or falling out of the bed…damn. By 7am, I was a complete and utter wreck and had to drag myself out of bed.
Tracey said it was her teeth as she, of course, has seen it all before, and thank the gods of childminders for her knowledge says I. We’ve had no repeat of the puky wakeys, but it meant I was still very anxious about her last night.
Anyway, as a result of all these fun times we’ve been having, the blog was put to one side for a bit.
But by god, do I think of writing every day. I can’t even remember a time that I didn’t. My friend Wayne, who is my conscience when it comes to this, always says that if I just sat down for ten minutes every day and just wrote, by the end of the month, I’d nearly have a whole book written out. And I hate to tell him every single time I meet him that I haven’t written anything. I used to keep tons of notebooks and buy lots of pens. The pens were important; they had to be comfortable enough for me to be able to write with…which would be great if I just wrote, right? So I stopped buying pens and I stopped buying notebooks because I wasn’t writing. But it still bugs me. It eats away at me when I’ve had a rough day, or when I’m sitting on the sofa watching some stupid show on TV. That little voice inside me saying:
Muuka, you’re wasting time, you should be writing
And I’m afraid every day that Paulo Coelho was right when he said if you ignore that little voice inside you that tells you who you are, one day it’ll decide it’s had enough and will stop bugging you.
At this stage, it’s not whispering anymore, it’s shouting.
And I don’t want it to stop because I don’t know what I’d do if it did.
So I write. 
And I’ll write every day until…well, ’till I gats nothin’ mo’ to say.

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