Last weekend, I sat reading an excerpt from Eloisa James’ new book, Paris in Love. She was writing about the year she, her husband and two children spent in France. The story was full of the delights and horrors of living abroad and being required to live outside one’s comfort zone. Some of her encounters were common place, dreary hotels, gaining weight and family squabbles about what monuments next to visit. During this interval, James intended to write four books: a scholarly work on Jacobean boys’ drama in 1607, two romance novels and one historical novel. As I am one who struggles each morning to post my blog, her intentions made me feel like a slug.
I work a good 5 to 6 hours a day at my craft which leaves little enough time to read emails from my traveling friends, let alone to pack my bags and arrange for hotel accommodations.
Still, I am not so old that I can’t remember my youthful travels with fondness. I even wonder why I no longer make time for journeys and work so tirelessly at my middling prose. Should I die tomorrow, my unfinished masterpiece won’t be missed. The urgency is in my head, so James’ foreign adventure poses a niggling question. Would it be wrong to go out and play, even at my age?
As I came to the end of James’ excerpt, she confessed that while in France, she produced no books of any kind. She’d spent the year relaxing instead.
I never did learn how to live in the moment, but I did learn that moments could be wasted and the world could continue to spin on its axis. It was a glorious lesson. (“Holiday in France,” by Eloisa James, Good Housekeeping, August 2012, pg. 166.)
As it is Sunday and the sun is beckoning at my window, I think I’ll heed James’ lesson. I’ve decided to shut off my computer and go out for ice cream.
(Courtesy of Bryanlong.com)
