The writers group I’d been invited to join over the Strokestown weekend had invited me out the Elphin’s windmill. Windmill? How had I missed that? I gave myself 15 minutes more than I thought I’d need to get there and, as it turned out, needed every second.
There was a film crew coming out and doing a piece on Elphin for Irish TV - something else new to me. It’s a Sky channel that puts up stuff for every county - mostly watched by those abroad and missing the ould sod. Things went well and the group’s founders answered questions on what, why and where etc. and then the presenter wanted to get some ‘typical’ footage of the group writing - or pretending to. Someone picked a topic - Pretending - and I wrote on that, not thinking too much and what wasn’t planned, I feel is worth sharing and so here it is:
Pretending
I used to pretend. I'd pretend I was confident and in control. I did this for years while inside, I was shivering like a jelly but couldn't let even my best friends know.
This inevitably led to an inner discomfort, then a shuddering and eventually, a major deconstruction and rebuilding of a life.
Now, I can happily pretend to be scared when I'm not, pretend to be out of control when I'm not and let the world know of my imperfections.
We are all fundamentally dysfunctional human beings and, once we stop pretending otherwise, we begin to grow.
I will go again to the Windmill Writers Group who seem to be a very friendly bunch of nice people with a lot of talent.
Ps. The program goes out on June 29th for people with tellys and skys
No comments:
Post a Comment