“Exploring life through fiction, together.”

[This will be the last Fiction Friday. I’m quitting writing for the foreseeable future. I hope to come back to it, but I don’t know when, so I can’t really call it a break. Thank you, with all my heart, for joining me on this adventure.]

For years, I was terrified I wasn’t getting enough out of life. I didn’t know enough, hadn’t experienced enough, hadn’t travelled enough, wasn’t enough.

So I worked hard, tried a bit of everything. My hobbies multiplied, my time dwindled.

Then we had kids.

Fiction Bite - Mendelssohn's March

It’s been a while.

Too long.

Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.

Really?

No.

So…?

So I’ve been scared. Of what you’ll say. Of what you want.

I still love you.

I was a prick.

First class.

I was hoping for second.

You were a prick.

I’m sorry.

Really?

I’ll prove it to you. Me and you, weekend in Barcelona.

How about you just come round for coffee? Say next week.

But I want to show you I’m sorry.

Turn up this time.

Quote of the Week

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” — Sylvia Plath

Book of the month

Lying by Sam Harris

Final Words

But slowly I realised that, for me at least, a better life isn’t about more. It’s about less. Less stress, less competing demands, less society driven guilt, less of almost everything.

So I started cutting. First the easy things, then the hard things. Now I’m onto the ‘how can I live without them’ things. But something still needs to go.

So I’m saying goodbye to writing.

But if you’ll permit me, I’ll leave you with one last set of questions.

If you had to cut everything you do down to the bone, what would you drop? Where would you focus all your newfound time? And who would you become if you followed that schedule for the next decade? 

Would you be willing to hit reply? It’d make my day to hear from you.

With Love,

Josiah