I seem to have spent a lot of time recently doing just about everything else except write another book. After all, it is nearly two years since I finished the first draft and more than three months since I uploaded it as an eBook but it seems I’m busy all the time, so much so that I never have time to write, or so I tell myself!
In an attempt to continue the deception, I spur myself on to do loads of unnecessary things as quickly as possible, so that I will have cleared a space in which I can write. It’s a bit like the clear the desk syndrome, sharpening all the pencils and making sure the eraser is to hand, that kind of thing.
I’ve even written stuff on my blog instead of actually sitting down and writing my novel. It’s almost as if I am frightened to start – frightened in case I can’t finish it, frightened that it will be no good, frightened that I will never actually start it in the first place, frightened that it will take me too long, frightened that it is beyond my skills, frightened that … I could go on and on but here’s the point.
Absolute nonsense, isn’t it?
Anyway, back to the title, I have been inspired.
One of my best friends has just completed an incredible walk / hike through an amazing group of European countries – a trans-national Camino-style adventure from Vienna in Austria through Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia to Trieste, Italy. Here’s the website http://www.peacewalk.eu
Owen mentioned some time ago that he was planning to walk this incredible route from south of Vienna all the way down to Trieste in Italy, cutting through six different cultures over three wee
ks or so but, I have to confess, it didn’t stir my interest at the time, being more interested in getting my book into shape than I was with myself. Anyway, my last attempt at a serious hike was about three years ago and I pulled out after the first day. I felt it was too much for me and that I just wasn’t able for it. In truth, I hadn’t prepared myself mentally for the challenge and I certainly had done nothing in the way of physical preparation.
And my niece is doing the incredible – actually cycling from South Korea across China and all the K-stan countries and over the Pamir highway and down into central Europe and on to the UK and Ireland, a total journey of gargantuan length. I suppose it has to be pretty much the same route the Mongol Khans took when they headed over into Europe. Fascinating. Take a look at Steph’s website and be even more fascinated. http://bike-back-home.blogspot.com.au
Incredible adventures, wonderful experiences. And I envy them and can’t help thinking why I haven’t done something like that for ages.
So, inspired by the two examples above, I am committing myself to doing that European Peace Walk or something similar in 2017. Too late to do it now, this year – thank God, so that gives me time to prepare and get myself ready to walk 25 – 35 K a day, carrying my own bag.
For too long I have been sedentary. I sit around all day messing about writing and fiddling with the website and the layout, graphics that sort of nonsense. But if I am not going to write something, I have to get up and be more active. There are always jobs to do in the garden now and then but then I do nothing for ages and yet I don’t manage to write or produce anything!
I remember a time when I stood on the top of the world looking down at the sun rising below my feet while I shivered in my sweat drenched clothes and I felt wonderful. I remember feeling superhuman when I reached the summit of Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah in Borneo, about 4100 metres high and high enough that oxygen became a problem in the last few hundred metres of the ascent.
And since then? I’ve never had that amazing sense of exhilaration that I had that Saturday morning, a quarter of a century ago.
OK, there is my new learning curve – shit or get off the pot, to put it bluntly. Write a new book or start training for a six or seven hundred kilometre walk in June or July next year.
Red Branch Chronicles 