Channeling the Spirit of Mulan

Photo by Anton Mishin on Unsplash

Love the article. Thanks Tim.

I promised myself this morning that I would start editing an old novel. A final edit after it has been put on the backburner for 5 years.

Then, naturally, I spent four hours in the garden; weeding, watering, taking 100 rooted cuttings and poking them in a shallow bed of soil to grow strong.

My spring garden full of weeds that provided a delay tactic for me this morning.

Really just avoidance, but exhaustive avoidance, especially when I have my right arm in plaster with multiple fractures. Then lunch, a nap, and Facebook; social media being the ultimate avoidance in the history of the world.

You popped up first on FB. I’m daunted by your success on Medium and haven’t read many of your articles. Probably jealous of your 100 million plus views. But, I’m incredibly glad I did read this post.

Not so petulant now, but still in awe.

Right this minute, after I press publish on this response, I am finding the file of my old manuscript and attacking it.

Yes, taking your ‘It’s never a good time to do anything. So do it anyway. Start today,’ take away to heart.

I lost my teaching job, cannot drive, cannot do too much with a purple plaster covering my dominant hand and can’t do much of anything else until after the school holidays end on October 12th. My plaster will be off then and I will be ambidextrous for the first time in my life and rearing to go back to work in some capacity.

Until then I have 25 free days to edit that old novel that gnaws at me with dark thoughts of what might have been. There are 25 days without house cleaning or meal prep and clean up, in fact no chores at all since my family banned me from doing anything that might compromise my broken wrist.

Nearly 4 weeks is ample right time to achieve something I’ve wanted to do for 15 years because I’ve complained long and hard that…

I’ve never had the time.

Thanks to your insights, I think it is time to edit and you have me pumped.

I was going to watch the new ‘Mulan’ this afternoon, but no, no, no. I must embody the spirit of Mulan instead and edit the bastard book that haunts me with its good bones and strange possibilities.

My ‘energy is too precious to waste’, you say. Yes.

Thank you for the firecracker up the backside, Tim.

Thank you times 1000 for not selling 50 K of your eBook and then writing about it. I am truly grateful that you wrote about it, (not that you didn’t sell a mill).

Going now, no ‘Mulan’ for this lame duck.

I am she, fighting against the odds in my own one-armed, slow two-finger typing way.

I got time.

Think I am ready to blossom.

Apricot blossom in my orchard, 17/09/20.

My heart is beating quite fast.

Yes. It. Is.

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*Photos are the author’s own work.