Net mending
A fisherman is still a fisherman while he is mending his nets
There is a little saying I like, and I got it from my former dramatherapy supervisor and all-round Wise Woman
:A fisherman is still a fisherman, while he is mending his nets.
This week, I’ve been doing some ‘net mending’.
Because substack is a monetised space, as a writer you can feel pressure to keep producing to whatever schedule you have created. But that is not how writing works. And it’s not how people work. We sometimes need time to sit and mend our nets before we go fishing again.
In the past few weeks I’ve been turning my attention, as I do intermittently, to what I actually want. I think this can often be a puzzling question for women my age who have kids, because we have spent quite a substantial chunk of years putting our own needs and wants aside. Our nets have become ragged and torn and we have had to keep fishing anyway, doing the best we can with what we have. We haven’t had time to stop and address the root cause of our low yields.
I have been to the odd business coach or life coach or just had good chats with friends in the last decade or so and they will ask the question: What do you actually really want to do? Sometimes they will add: Where do you want to be in five / ten years time?
And often I have just felt completely overwhelmed by those questions, as if I’m not just busy fishing, but have actually fallen overboard into a stormy sea, and I’m trying not to drown, and my head is occasionally appearing above the surface as I gasp for air and struggle to get back to my boat, and then someone sticks a microphone in my face and says, “BBC News here. Just wondered if you had any comment on where you see yourself in five years time?”