Plan, Alphabet

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Let’s face it fellows scribes, this isn’t plan B, this is the last name on the school register, the highest number in the line, the last plane out. Some of us may have the fortune of knowing what to be from the get-go, like a costume you always wore in Kindergarten, the books you like to read about. Then there’s the transitional folk; the journos to Novelists, sketch artists to illustrators, snappers to professional Photographers. These special, wondrous few have a Fate’s skipping rope, jumping over obstacle over obstacle with unfathomable ease, we all know one or two. I know somebody who was a Jeweller courier, A nursery Nursery and a R.N all before her 35th Birthday! Some Fates are just written in Cursive

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Others are done with jagged edges, clotting ink and an unsteady hand, survival instinct is not always about facing Death but the absolute worst of life’s uncertainties – You’re on a precipice and while some may look at the majesty of the view, others might see vast emptiness and solitude. In a personal level I was handed a curveball this week, one I should have anticipated but didn’t. I felt my share of despair before cracking on to find Plan HIJKLMNOP, nobody wants to know how Labyrinthine an Artist’s life really is. After all, would you want to spend your days proverbial wandering in Hampton Court Maze?? Of course you don’t!!

And So the secret is kept for a manuscript or two, by the third try you begin to get suspect and by Story Number 5. You’re wanting to claw your way out but as with all mazes the only way is forward, so forward you go.

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Desperation in the Artist is not like the average desperation oh, no, no we are a whiteboard of ideas and way outs. It’s probably the most harmless mania there is, one minute you have a poetry bundle, the next you’re writing songs and applying with a Artist name not that similar to Enya.

You try out contests in photography thinking maybe you can win because to have a good eye despite never being near a red lightbulb in your entire life. The drive to succeed distracts the despair but only just because you can’t be still even for a moment, because the reality monster is hungry so by all means, run, run until you can’t run anymore

Even then, keep running because my fellow scribes, running is all we have left to do

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