Two-Fifty Tuesday: Sacrifices

The Whirligig of Time

Let’s say you want some homemade chocolate chip cookies. Do you happen to find them around the house? Or do you make them?

Let’s say you want to write. Do you happen to find the time in your schedule? Or do you make time?

I get it. Time is an enemy to so many of us because, well, life. That pesky day job, family responsibilities, a social life (if we’re lucky). When I re-focused on writing, I was teaching full time, mom to two young kids, wife to a husband who traveled. All. The. Time. I barely had time to breathe, let alone write. 

So I had to make some hard choices. I gave up swimming and started working out at home to save the commute time to and from the pool. I rarely watched TV—I definitely wasn’t keeping up with water-cooler conversations at work. I carved out a few hours every Tuesday where I refused to cook dinner and clean up. If my husband wasn’t home, the girls ate cereal. (They survived.)

It’s not easy, especially when writing itself is a challenge. And it’s not perfect. Many Tuesdays I ended up not writing. And it took a long time. Longer than I thought/hope/expected to finish my first novel. But I just chipped away at it, one minute at a time. 

And then I taught my girls how to bake so I could make time for both writing and get my homemade chocolate chip cookies. 🙂