BEAT SABRE AND LIVING.

Its early June and slightly bizarre to be sitting here at 8.15pm in the evening, writing my latest novel Quest For Courage at the dining table,  whilst my 21 year old son makes another attempt on the World Record for the VR game Beat Sabre. He's 6,000 points away from reaching the top ten global scoreboard which is something of an achievement. Especially, when you consider my boy has dyspraxia, auditory dyslexia and a visual processing disorder. In theory he shouldn't be able to do this. He falls 'up' stairs several times a day, walks into things, forgets things said to him constantly and struggles with all the activities of daily living. Yet he has practised Beat Sabre so much he has not only mastered this game, but also learnt to drive an automatic car, passing his test first time. Something we never expected him to achieve. I am so proud of him, sometimes I think I might burst. Don't let anyone tell you, your son will not do anything because he has 'issues'. Determination overrides diagnosis's such as these.

This makes me think of my life, coming from an illiterate mother and a labourer father as a child I don't think I was expected to achieve much either, but I think close friends will say I did achieve much. Nor have I stopped, or given up striving to improve myself because I'm older. I've watched some of my peers relax and settle into a comfortable life as their end of life destiny fills their thoughts. This thought affects me the exact opposite way. I'm not ready to stop living my life, Covid be damned. So I'm finishing the first draft of novel number five (at 70,000 words now), in a strange situation where my son pounds out the Greatest Showman, one of my favourites not six feet away. Fortunately, I can also lock myself away, not in a Covid way, but in my mind and concentrate on the words I need to finish this, the third novel in the Witch on the Warpath series. And to think I have another three stories lined up to write in my head and a further one completed awaiting final proof edit and print production.

I realised recently that for a traditional publisher/agent I probably  don't have enough years left ahead of me to provide them with lucrative career prospect. Its why I use my savings and sales to produce more books. It is true you enter this world with nothing and you leave with nothing, but this is only true if you don't LIVE. Retirement is a state of mind not an occupation, in my view. I retired once and lasted three days before re-entering full-time employment again. 

This current health crisis has given all of us time to think about our lives,. How we live them, how we want to live them and what is important to us. I decided, whilst in meditation last Friday that I want to be buried. I'd spent years worrying about cremation or burial, then we did a session imaging lying down in a field with trees and sunshine and life around us and I thought 'this is lovely.' This is what I want, where I want to be. I also realised that there is no way I'm leaving this Earth with nothing. I shall take with me the most amazing memories of my family, my friends, my career, my learning, my writing, the world around me and... my son attaining a place on the global Beat Sabre score board.

Never stop. Never sit and do nothing. Never complain if you've never tried. Never surrender to living.