the holidays are nearly done…   the year is nearly done…  i am nearly done the ninth book in Robin Hobb’s Farseer series; by tomorrow I may know the fate of the fool, who has been healed and left on the island with the black man, who was a white prophet.    this series blows me away, and it’s also making me a bit sad.   partly because it’s nearly done, and i’ve read all her other works as Robin Hobb (but need to now look for Meghan Lindholm’s books – her other pseudonym) and partly because it’s so incredible to me that she’s managed to create this whole universe which rings so congruent and consistently throughout all the books.    I’ve been frustrated with the main character, and now that’s all resolved and I see that I was led to that frustration quite intentionally.   wow.  that’s all.   how does one do this?

she says you just sit down and you start to write, and then you send things out…

so this is the quandry, at the end of a year in which i’ve met most of the goals that i’d set myself – what next?   part of getting older is realizing that some doors close (and others open) but another part of it is realizing that the things one hoped for aren’t really as satisfying as one had thought.    i started making a dreamboard collage tonight.   looking at the one that i made last year around this time.    and started thinking of what else i might do…   it seems late in the game to be switching careers but, “what if?”   which leads to me a list of things that won’t ever be satisfied in this current world-view i am focused on.    the evidence is in, after 23 years, about what’s possible and not possible, what people want, what collegiality might be for others…   and i have to wonder if it’s really all i wanted?

i know, on the one hand, that i’ve been incredibly lucky to have had this career and these colleagues.   and yet…   it makes me think of sherri tepper who, after a career in some kind of social worker, retired early and became a prolific and excellent writer of amazing novels.    not sure what she’s doing now.   or i might make art.   or…

on the verge of a new year, it feels like a lot of questions need answering, and a new plan needs to be drawn up.   i guess what i started off thinking about was that as one gets older one realizes more and more what one doesn’t want to do – i’ve done enough management.    i don’t want to do more foster-care.   i feel too old to have another child (although this has been one of the best things i’ve done, and elton john at 64 just had a baby yesterday!  and hugh hefner just announced his engagement, at 84, to a 24 year old woman).   i don’t want to be so obsessive.   i don’t want to be anyone’s assistant.   i want to feel i’ve got some things on my own.   i don’t think i want to go into business – it feels late to do that, and what would i sell?   i don’t want to work as hard as my travelling workshop colleagues who go from place to place…

the big accomplishment, or one of them, of the last year is getting a third of the way through a master’s degree.  another is being able to stand up in front of audiences and do workshops around the province.   illustrating the CLBC book is an accomplishment too….

and i made some art…  about a dozen drawings, a few of them that i liked.

things to build on.