When To Write
My two daughters have both moved out of the house for university. Besides the fact that I’m not allowed to turn their bedrooms into extensions of my home library (a policy we’ll have to revisit later… 🙂 ), I’ve adjusted to the empty nest. All my extra time can now go to writing.
There were a lot of years when I couldn’t do that. Write. Or know what extra time even was. And I often berated myself for that. Why couldn’t I do it all? Intellectually, we know it’s not possible; emotionally, I succumbed to the guilt.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see what I’d say to my younger self. Life gets in the way. That’s okay! I don’t know that I’d believe me, but I love the message regardless. Life did get in my way—but I wouldn’t have changed how much time and energy I poured into my kids. And now life isn’t getting in my way, so I’ll take advantage. I’d forgotten—or couldn’t see—that our lives ebb and flow and it’s the long game we’re holding out for.
So if you’re in the crunch of your life, and you can’t find as much time to write as you’d like, that’s okay! I can’t promise you when or how the demands on your time will ease up, only that the odds are that they will. In the meantime, cut yourself some slack. You’re doing the best you can. The writing, like I’m rediscovering, will always be there.