Hold Fast to Dreams

It is already the middle of September, and the below seasonal temperatures here in Toronto make it feel like we have stepped fully into fall. Have you noticed how the days have already become shorter with the sun rising later and setting earlier? I don’t feel ready to let go of summer, yet, in just over a week, summer will officially end, fall eagerly waiting to take its place.

And as fall approaches, I am trying, desperately, to sure up my footing. Again. I am, daily, trying to bunker down and focus, strip procrastination of its power over me. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic but it feels like 2014 has been my “Year of Procrastination” instead of my “Year of Positivity.” It’s not the writing that feels uphill. The difficult part has been getting to the page — sitting down to write without being distracted by social media, TV, the goings-on on the street below (I live in a colourful neighbourhood). I have been tempted, really tempted, to chuck it all — Facebook, Twitter, my blog — believing that that “tossing away” will exorcise procrastination from my life. However, once I sit down to write, once I’m in that “zone,” the writing flows. And I feel like myself again.

What I’ve realized is that, since I’ve been in Toronto, I don’t feel like I have a room of my own. I haven’t found that place — a café, public library, a park — where I can, if just for a short time, cut myself off from the world and be at one with my writing. I don’t feel productive, like I’m advancing. I can’t see my progress clearly. I don’t have a regular writing routine. My current day job does make writing regularly a challenge, but I do my best, still, to write every day (or almost every day).

Despite the challenges, despite not having a room of my own, I’m holding on, holding on to hope, to the desire to write that carries me. I’m holding on to the long-term view. Holding on to hope, I am grateful for the friends, my believing mirrors, who support and encourage me. Langston Hughes counselled that we, “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

Today, I’m holding on.