I started this month, Inktober 2024, with a quote from Agatha Christie. I think it is only appropriate that I close out this year’s work with her words as well. Not because she is the most read female mystery writer of all time. Not because she was perfect or the ultimate example of what a woman should be. I started and ended this months with her words because she was herself all along her journey – faced her own highs and lows – and marched onward. She had marital troubles, financial woes, family squabbles, travel adventures, a second marriage…and all the while kept writing her stories, her way. If I could talk to Agatha I would ask her how she kept going through it all. How did she keep such amazing mysteries – plot lines that she invented that have been reworked hundreds of times by other authors – how did she keep inventing during such life experiences? As I have read all her books, some multiple times, I can see how she did it. She focused, she plotted, and she lost herself in her work. By being determined to have one thing in her life that would be all her own, she kept writing.
“I am me“…above all else. Through all that turmoil Agatha figured out who she was, what she wanted, and she stuck to that. The rest eventually worked itself out, or it didn’t. In this quote Agatha reminds us that she knew she could do the things that “me can do“. And she could not do the things that she would like to do. In other words, spend your time doing what you do best, and let the rest go. There are a bazillion ways to find people who can do what you cannot or do not want to do…stop wasting your time trying to do it all.
In this crazed internet world we live in, I find people (and myself) struggling to handle all the expectations, data dumps, bombardment of videos, reels, posts, articles, pop ups and tv shows telling us what we should do, who we should be and how we should live. OMG! Stop the madness! Instead of getting off the ride completely we need to FOCUS and embrace the phrase I am me! Shakespeare said, ‘know thyself‘, which is basically the same thing. Know who you are, what you want, what you can do, will do, want to do, then let the rest go. It will eventually work itself out, or it won’t. Worrying and striving to be perfect will not make any of that better; it will only make it all worse.
As I finish this post for Inktober 2024, I thank you for your patience and understanding, for your kind comments, and for your likes for my work and words. Stay tuned as in November I will be back to posting on the even days of the month with new work, new words, and more ways for us to handle this thing called the creative life!
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