Discipline

The semester is winding down and I'll have little tutoring to do until March 2011, so I really should finish my novel. Of course, it's a lot more difficult sitting inside and writing during the warmer weather, when one can be outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine. Discipline will definitely be required. Someone once said to me that I had an amazing work ethic and that's true, but there was a time long ago when I would begin one thing and move onto the next. My life cluttered with partially completed projects. Sometime in my 20s I decided that I would never take on something that I couldn't finish and I've stuck to that for most of my adult life. Strangely enough, some have perceived me as stoic, surely not, doesn't stoic actually mean unmoved by passion, joy or grief? And yet, to undertake some things we are required to keep going in the face of life's ups and downs and I have certainly done this. I think that this is what separates completers from those who procrastinate; the ability to allow the project to be more important than emotionality. It all sounds rather inhuman, but necessary. But I wonder about what has been lost and gained by those who give their lives over to their art. Recently saw two different interviews, one with Philip Glass's wife, who realised that she was always going to play second fiddle to his music and she could no longer bear it, and the other last night with Neil Diamond who openly stated that his two marriages had suffered because he put his music first and he was surely now a 'solitary man'. Maybe it's simply that some people are driven by inner desires that must be satiated in order for them to feel really alive.