That simple phrase strikes fear into the heart of many a Wellington office worker.
Not because of the performance review itself; most of us make a pretty decent fist of whatever role we’ve been assigned in an organisation, and it’s a rare employee who walks through the door each day determined to do a bad job. No, it’s the paperwork associated with performance reviews that gives us all sleepless nights. Tedious forms covered with tables and codes on which you must meticulously describe your wonderful (and sometimes mediocre) achievements of the past 12 months, all of which will hopefully earn you whatever pitiful pay rise your employer has deigned to bestow on you this year.
Thankfully, those days are now behind me. But in the interests of convincing you I don’t spent my entire week throwing sticks and balls for Arki, and also of answering the question, “Where have the last 3 ½ months gone?”, to my own satisfaction, I thought it was time I conducted a self-assessment of my performance as a full-time writer, and hopefully gave myself a glowing review of said performance.
In my first blog post on 29 June, I wrote of my excitement at finally being in a position to write full-time. I listed the anticipated benefits. Writing (obviously). Not commuting an hour each way to my job. And the free time to pursue other interests like playing the piano and working on my family tree.
While those last two activities remain proverbial pies in the sky, writing certainly hasn’t, although “full-time” is an interesting description. While there is indeed plenty of writing that goes on, it’s interspersed with going for runs, indulging in my latest TV binge series (this month it’s McLeod’s Daughters), part-time coaching for the NZ Libraries Partnership Programme, and my voluntary role as secretary for an international academic and research libraries committee. In short, I’ve quickly turned into one of those people who says, “I don’t how I ever found time to go to work!”
Old habits die hard, though. Once or twice I’ve found myself getting just as stressed by my daily “to do” list as I used to at work. I’ve always been a little bit obsessive (A little bit? Ha!) about ticking things off each day, but I’m gradually learning to say myself, “FFS. You’re retired!” and to step away from the desk for a break.
But back to the writing, which has mostly been of the non-fiction variety. At the end of July I submitted a piece to Landfall magazine’s annual essay competition. It’s called “30 Places to Learn About Being Pākehā” and is a personal memoir of trying to figure out what being Pākehā is all about, and how my knowledge (or lack of) about Māori culture and the Treaty of Waitangi has affected that. It started as an assignment for a course in creative non-fiction (travel writing, memoir writing, etc.) last trimester, so the competition deadline provided a useful milestone to work towards during my first few weeks at home.
By the time I finished the essay, my next creative writing course had kicked off. This one is called Eco-fictions and Non-fictions. It’s broadly about nature writing, environmental writing, writing about climate change, and so on. The first few weekly exercises were a bit weird (Write as if you are land, Write as if you are an animal, Write about what a tree wants, etc.), but I gradually found my groove. For my first assignment I wrote a review essay of Rebecca Priestley’s book, Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica, which I had always wanted to read. In the book, Priestley touches on her anxiety about climate change and being kept awake at night by thoughts of what her children’s future might look like.
It got me thinking about my own feelings on the subject, including a sense of helplessness at not knowing exactly what I can do about the world’s biggest “wicked problem”, and in the face of what feels like an avalanche of doom and gloom stories about our planet’s future. So for my final assignment, I’ve decided to write about what some researchers are calling “climate change fatigue” and what the solution to it might be (hint: a little more positivity wouldn’t go amiss).
The course will finish in a few short weeks and I’ll be ready to get stuck into something new. Excitingly, I’ve decided the “something” will be my first novel. I don’t know much about it yet, but it will be about a group of friends (all women) and it will be set in the Wairarapa, including – ta da! – The Card House. It will touch on themes of aging, friendship and family (I think; like I said, it’s early days).
It’s not the first time I’ve said to myself, “I want to write a novel”, but it is the first time I’ve had an idea that really excites me, and the first time I’ve felt as if I can actually do it. So wish me luck. :-)
That brings me to this blog, which has been another very important part of my new writing life. I really didn’t know what I was doing when I started it, and I still don’t. But setting myself a weekly deadline has been a very useful discipline, and a good practice run for the day when I write a regular column for a newspaper or magazine (another writing goal). It’s also a nice way of documenting the ins and outs of this new life of mine, while keeping in touch with my family and friends who supported me in this decision. So cheers to you. :-)
I think I’ll give myself an A+.
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