A word.
According to Sheryl , author of The Creative Life, us writing folk should all pick our own unique word to guide us through the coming year.
I’m not entirely sure I want to be rushed on through to 2021 at any great speed. It’s one thing knowing that in 2020 I turn fifty! Fifty! It’s quite another to have to contemplate the idea of being fifty-one. Fifty is middle aged and that’s fair enough. Life does, after all, begin at fifty etc, etc.. But fifty-one? To be fifty-one is to dive headlong down Moonface’s (1) slippery slope and to find oneself in a dark-damp hollow, confronted with a not-to-be-shifted trap door.
A real wrinkly face to grainy face moment. An end moment.
Still, I’ve told to select a word, by a highly-successful writer in the know, so here goes.
Persist.
It’s a stubborn and determined word, with all the power that goes with the repetitive hammering home of the obvious. It’s a word that I lifted straight from the website of my beanie pal, and role model, Dominic Cummings:
‘If you think I’ve insanely ignored you,’ wrote the old bean, ‘persist for a while’.
It’s a beautiful word with so many inspiring connotations, the best being:
- Blind self-belief
- Immunity from the effects of mockery
- My arthritic big toe
Already, I’m feeling it. In this year, 2020, I will:
- Keep on applying for the Whitehall post of Junior Researcher.
- Take selfies wearing my ballet tutu in various public locations (meant to do that last year, but only managed one such outing)
- Ignore my big toe, no matter how persistent it is at telling me it hurts (i.e. can’t afford £35 a time for the podiatrist, especially considering that, to date, none of her solutions have done anything other than turn my toe’s grumbles into screams)
And, having dealt with all the word stuff, I will set myself my own personal (achievable) target. In 2020, I will further my free-range writing career and exceed the last quarter’s earnings of 40p.
Persist. Keep going. It’s only 80p!
Copyright owned by The Silly-Savvy Salopian, 7th January 2020
Image by Jeff Kingma from Pixabay
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(1) Do not dare tell me you have no idea who Moonface is. Everyone’s read Enid Blyton’s ‘The Enchanted Wood’, haven’t they? Yes, of course, you have.
