Going Nowhere, Feeling Grateful by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

This time of year there are a lot of writers’ and illustrators’ retreats, open days and conferences happening. If you are sick, housebound or strapped for cash, as many of us are, it is easy to feel as though there is a great deal of fun passing us by, and maybe just as importantly, that we are losing out on opportunities to make friends, learn more about our craft, and even pitch our ideas to publishers.

This is when I feel most grateful for the internet. Stuck at home, I can still send out words and pictures, stories and ideas to the world and play my little creative part. I can submit to agents and publishers via email, and enter competitions just by using my keyboard. It all seems miraculous, especially when I think how much harder all this must have been for someone in my position even as short a time as twenty years ago, when everything had to be typed or printed and mailed, and there was no way to chat with a group of like-minded people as I now can every day with the Association of Christian Writers on Facebook.

A friend of mine posted a wonderful Leunig cartoon recently that celebrates JOMO (the joy of missing out) as opposed to FOMO (the fear of missing out). It’s hard to not be able to be physically present at meetings and conferences, knowing my friends are gathering and getting to interact over coffee and cake, but it is also not so bad when I remember I don’t have to negotiate travel, pay for hotels or deal with the social anxiety I would doubtless have being wheeled around a crowded hall with my pitches or portfolio clutched to my pounding heart.

Instead I’ll be something that I quite often have to come to terms with, “happy-sad.” I’m happy for my friends who are out there networking and having their wonderful creativity lauded and (hopefully) snapped up, and I’m happy I can keep my blood pressure down by doing things at a slower pace, cosy and warm at home, yet at the same time I’m sad that I’m not able to meet them in real life, share their laughter, give and receive hugs and be part of something “with skin on” (as my fellow M.E. sufferers call real life activities).

But because of the internet, we are all still connected, and like my community of chronically ill friends, we can encourage one another, whatever we have going on (or indeed not going on). Life is a varied tapestry, so are things like health, finances and opportunity. Just as the body of Christ is us all doing our various things in our differing ways.

So if you are going to one of these events, I hope you will have a brilliant time and I hope too, that you know that those of us who can’t be there are rooting for you, and looking forward to hearing all about it! Have fun and bring us back photos and cake!*

*I may have mentioned cake twice in this blog post. But I congratulate myself on not having specifically mentioned éclairs. 

Photo from Pixabay

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a disabled writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her full-length publications include Garden of God’s Heart and Whale Song: Choosing Life with Jonah. She has a new book, Recital of Love, coming out with Paraclete Press in June 2020. Keren lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.