On motivation

Thank you to everyone who was so kind about my recent efforts and recommended a bit of a rest. I tried, I really did, but I got bored.

I think I am incapable of taking any kind of real break. I find that just a few hours off doing something extravagant like - ooh, reading for half an hour, pottering in my studio or even just getting out of the village once a week (if I'm lucky) is enough to recharge my batteries. We live a pretty basic, simple life and it makes you appreciate the little things more. My big indulgence last week was to sit and actually watch 'The Devil's Whore' without needle felting something or scribbling in my sketch book, my normal evening occupations. Having lived most of my life without a TV, I find it hard to just sit and gawp at 'the goggle box', so at the end of the day when I am trying to wind down, I tend to just listen to it and get some work done at the same time. But there are always one or two programmes I give my absolute and undivided attention to and then I enjoy them so much I feel as if I've had a tonic. At the moment, 'The Devil's Whore' gets a big fat ten out of ten from me. Marvellous stuff. (I'm still mourning the end of Valentine Warner's series 'What to eat Now'). So once my bits and bobs were sent up to Scotland for the Christmas Show, I set to organising some decent packaging for my various things, finding blank accessories to felt onto, sourcing findings and fripperies for baubles and banging out more ideas in my sketchbooks. Yes, I do need more than one. I use them all. Really.

I've read a few posts in Blogland about working from home: getting motivated, organising time and not procrastinating. It can be hard, but nowadays I can't imagine not getting up in the morning and 'going to work' - even if it is just next door from the bedroom. As far as I am concerned, there is no choice: I was born with nothing. I've had little security or comfort blankets, be it financial or family support - and that can have two reactions. Either you grow up without anything and that is the way things are; knowing nothing else, you expect little better. Or you work your socks off 24/7. The statistics for someone from my background are frightening. One or more of these things are proven to have a detrimental effect on a child's adult life and I grew up with all of the following; being brought up in poverty, growing up with neither parents working, having one or more parents who are depressed/invalid/alcoholic, being fostered, having a chaotic home life (I had moved five times by the time I was six years old. To date I have moved at least 16 times and that doesn't include temporary foster homes) losing one or more parents in childhood, growing up in care, and leaving home at a young age, in my case, sixteen. Not unsurprisingly, most young people who have to deal with issues like these find it hard to cope on their own. They tend to get abandoned by the 'care' system anyway when they are 18, and so the whole tragic cycle usually starts again. I am only thankful that my parents (especially my mother) for the short time I had them, were decent, intelligent and honest or I might have been truly lost.





Any one of those early life situations add to the chances of your becoming some kind of addict, getting into drugs, becoming involved with crime or ending up in prison, early pregnancy, depression, becoming benefit dependent, not going on to higher education, poor mental and physical health...in short, if you've been handed a bad deck of cards, you learn to play your very best with them, or you lose the game. At first, trying to live independently when I was still pretty much a child, I played the cards carelessly and was on a bad losing streak. Apart from the early pregnancy and ending up in jail, I fell victim to many of the pitfalls mentioned. Then I looked carefully at my hand of cards, and realised that if I didn't make a big effort I'd drop out of the game altogether. And no one would really notice. Life, unfortunately, is not fair and if I didn't help myself, no one else would. Once I started applying myself, things started to improve, though it was never easy; with little outside help, anything I did - such getting to University - took a proportionally larger effort than it did most people. I almost gave up in the first year. Thank God I didn't.




Since then I've played the game badly sometimes, but I disciplined myself to get at least some work done every day and gradually that became ingrained habit. I started to get commercial jobs with hard deadlines; no choice about not getting it done, you just pull all the stops out to finish it on time. Now I find that even without a deadline, I am driven. It helps that I have no other income - there is no bigger incentive for getting up off your arse, than the knowledge that if you don't bring in even the smallest amount of money, there is no housekeeping. From waking up to bedtime, my day is spent pretty much on full throttle - as any full time artist knows, creating things takes up only one third of the process - you also have to factor in - upkeep of sites and shops, research, self promotion, networking, designing, posting out orders, sourcing materials, planning ahead, starting new projects, preparing for print, record keeping, photographing - the list goes on. It eats up the hours, but all that matters is ploughing on to try to make something of my life. The most crucial of these is to get our very own home, because I have never once lived in a house that belonged to me or my parents. So the next 'to-do' is to move back home to Devon. It's been thirty years since I vowed I would return one day, as my new foster parents drove me away over the border to a new life. And Andy needs chickens and pigs. A permanent vegetable patch. Maybe a dog. We both want to put down roots.





When I was twelve and clearing out what had been my home only two months previously, I found this poem amongst my dad's few belongings. He was a good writer and artist, but he never really did anything with his gifts. He drank instead. It is etched on my memory: when things are really bad inside me and I am feeling very low, (which, believe it or not, is still quite often) I repeat it to myself. It was one of the reasons I made him and my mother a silent promise that I would become an artist for them.

'I have wasted the years and gathered no gold:
I have sometimes been hungry -
and often been cold.
They laugh at me, pity and scorn -
as I lie at my ease.
But I've heard the rain whisper to me as it falls,
And I've taught the old budgie to answer my calls.
And the things that I've missed
just don't matter at all -
Besides these.'
Bill Parker 1915 - 1979

I cannot even type it out without breaking down.

Which ramble brings me to why I work all day, nearly every day. Because I don't want to be yet another predictable statistic of failure. I don't want to die disappointed with myself, as my father did. That, my friends, is my motivation.