As I sit here to write this blog, I am distracted. The world around me is utter, complete, and total chaos. That makes focussing on writing incredibly difficult. Especially for someone whose neurodivergent mind craves order. I am slightly OCD (obsessive-compulsive though to say disorder would be an oxymoron). So, functioning right now is hard.
So, why? Why am I, a person with OC-happy, sitting here in such a messy room?
The complex answer is The Second Law of Thermodynamics, which basically says the universe will move towards higher levels of disorder or entropy.
And life certainly proves that point, over and over again. Even a life as perfect and charmed as mine.
The less technical answer to that question is still complex…
Yesterday was our @HomeCrazzyHome Christmas party. So, we had seven little humans and eight big ones, presents, and enough food for a small army. But as we prepped and cleaned for it, we tossed everything into the ‘formal junk room.’
Yes, we have a ‘formal junk room.’ One day, once the leak in the bay window is finally fixed (three attempts and counting), this room will be redecorated to Alan’s more sedate standards. It will be the adult gathering place with a small dining table and couches for after-dinner conversation. It already houses much of his library.
But because of that leak, it has become more of a storage space. The junk room. We all have one. And they all prove that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
But, why would I choose to write in the ‘formal junk room’?
Because my beautifully decorated study was taken over by four cute, furry, smelly little guinea pigs. I swear that whoever wrote the infamous Star Trek episode, The Trouble with Tribbles, owned guinea pigs. But since my girls moved into my lovely writer’s study, I was forced to move out.
I have floated around ever since. I tried the family room. But there was no place comfortable to sit for sitting. There is a wonderful reclining couch in the formal junk room. So, I migrated there.
At first, it was not so bad. I do try to keep the chaos under control. That is my other tagline, the one for my feminist-homemaker side, “making order out of chaos.” But as I said, that is a constant battle thanks to that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Now, add to that all the fact that I had to migrate my sewing room into here a couple of weeks ago as well. The utility/sewing/gardening/crafting room becomes a freezer in the winter. So, I have sat up a desk and moved the sewing machine and my current quilting projects into the formal junk room as well.
And so it is that I am sat in here surrounded by utter, complete, and total chaos.
With writing, editing, and social media to be done. As well as a table runner for my Old Lady Quilting Club this coming Saturday. And my mind is as disorganized as this room.
It all reminds me of one of my favorite books about writing – Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It was one of the first books that I read in 2019. In it, Woolf postulates that for women writer’s to take their place among the ‘literary greats’ they need an independent income of five-hundred pounds (at 1920s rate) and a room of her own. I spent weeks and hundreds of words, thousands, pondering just that.
I am finally blessed to be at a place where I do have that independent income. Alan does not care if I make money from my writing as long as it makes me happy and complete as a person. Woolf too had an independent income, an inheritance from an aunt. As she points out, most of the ‘literary greats’ had such incomes. Patrons or younger sons, wealthy, and free to pursue their art.
I get that. The need to make money was what destroyed my love of writing. And this new independence has restored that.
But it was the ‘room of one’s own’ with which I struggled. To me, it implied a sterility, that life and art were set apart from one another. And to me, that was a distinctly masculine point of view. A more feminine or goddess-centered one would be the inclusivity of both within the same space.
The reality of achieving that though is not easy. And so I sit in the formal junk room, typing away at my blog. And thinking of all the other things that I need to be doing instead. And as an OC-happy person, I do NEED to bring order to my space if I am going to succeed.
And that is okay, too. I think that if Virginia was to spend some time with me, if we were to sit down at one of our Sunday F4 (Friends, Food, Fun & Filosophy) to discuss the matter, we could agree that the uniquely feminine voice is one not fostered in isolation, but crafted in the center of that complexity, that chaos of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is the counterpart and complement to the masculine one that has dominated for so long. And it restores some of the order to that complex system.
Now, I have had all I can take for now of staring at the chaos. It is time for me to do one of the things I do incredibly well…to make order out of chaos. Because if I am to finish writing Ægir’s Wife in 2019 and make this table runner before Saturday, then in this moment that other part of me must rule.
Goddess bless you,
Tara
Tara Cox - Literary Erotica 