Tag: balance

What’s the Value in That?

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Monday, I watched this 60-second documentary about dogs and went spiraling into an existential crisis of sorts.

It wasn’t the senior dogs that nearly had me in tears, though their sweet graying faces were touching. It was the moment the dogs were taken to an assisted living facility. “Most of these people are lonely,” says Kim Skarritt, the founder of Silver Muzzle, via voiceover as senior citizens pet dogs and smile broadly at the camera.

I’ve been struggling to find balance in my life as of late. Being a mother has a way of sucking up all the spare time in a day, making it difficult for a woman to pursue her personal goals and dreams. I’ve wanted to spend more time writing essays and stories of my own, but with a full-time job and a family to take care of, that can be a little dicey. Every hour I spend has to come from somewhere else, so I typically end up waiting until the end of the day (when I’m already drained). That means I’m either losing sleep or precious hours with my sweet husband, whose company I very much enjoy, but I keep on doing it because—dadgummit—writing is my great purpose in this life!

And then I watch that video and think about homeless animals and lonely senior citizens, both populations shoved to the margins, things we’d rather not think about. Then there is the current immigration crisis to consider, the one that is forcibly separating families at the border and sending children to detention centers. I can’t forget that there’s racial injustice everywhere or the fact that white people are falling down rabbit holes of hatred. On any given day, there are 428,000 children in foster care. The suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have drawn my attention to the fact that suicide is on the rise in the United States. In fact, it has risen nearly thirty percent since 1999. Oh, and opioid abuse has reached epidemic status.

I haven’t done a singlething to combat any of this suffering. But, hey, at least I wrote that short story I’ve been noodling on, right? Yay for me!

In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus tells his disciples that when the final judgment comes, “the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:34-40).

There ain’t word one in there about the arts, folks. I was bored to tears, and you entertained me with your dazzling prose. Not even in The Message version.

That is what it means to be about the Father’s business, I think. That’s what I should be doing. People young and old give up and die every day because they think no one cares about them. I could reach out and tell them otherwise. People everywhere are in need of food and clean water, access to better education and childcare. I could help them get it. People are strangers, even to their neighbors, and social isolation is crippling us emotionally. I could shut this laptop and walk down my street. What is an essay—even one that’s well-crafted—in the face of all that? If I throw the last 5,000 words I’ve written into the abyss, what would it change? Probably nothing. I tell you what—sometimes writing feels as pointless to me as chopping decorative pillows.

However, writers are fond of defending their craft as absolutely necessary to the human condition. Ernest Hemmingway said it requires one to “sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” From someone who cut language pretty close to the bone, that’s a bit melodramatic. Neil Gaiman said, “Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing day nothing else matters.” Really, Neil? Nothing else? According to Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I can think of a few.

Books are friends, portals into the soul, journeys taken on magic carpets, a way of saying what cannot be said any other way. Yeah, we like to pile on and puff it up for looks. Phillip Pullman believes that, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” And I’ll stop with that, because I can get behind this sentiment—even if it was said by a self-proclaimed “religious atheist.”

Hell, even the fact I can sit here and kvetch about all this on my Mac from the comfort of my middle-class home (with Solomon Burke on my record player for goodness sake) requires me to admit the staggering amount of white privilege I enjoy—yet another issue in need of a solution.

So, yes, it’s safe to say that I’m questioning a great deal about my “passion” as of late. Writing to inform, to persuade, and to educate—I’m feeling pretty okay about that—but beyond those goals (none of which I would dare label as “noble”) I’m of two minds. Can I continue to spend time writing in a world where my cat has it better than a lot of people? Can I, in good conscience, spend hours working on an essay when I could be helping ESL students better express themselves?

Nathalie Sarraute said “the act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation.” Those are two words a lot of people don’t know the meaning of, much less could ever hope to experience. And what are catharsis and liberation worth when there are millions of people struggling to keep it together or feed a family on a few bucks a day? I don’t think there’s much catharsis to be had in a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese, but I could be wrong.

Finally, dear reader (and if you’ve managed to hang on this long, I salute you), all this navel-gazing is not meant to heap hot coals on your head. My judgment extends no further than the rather roomy confines of my own flesh and bone. This uncertainty is mine and no one else’s, and this post is only a marker for those who, like me, are finding their way.

Playing Phone Tag With My Muse

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Norman Vincent Peale once said that, “The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.” Mayhap that has been the root cause of my difficulty behind the keyboard as of late. For more weeks than I care to count, I’ve been, as my grandmother might say “riled up” about one thing or another. Struggles at work, time management problems, issues of over-commitment to various projects and groups–the list goes on and on. In fact, it often feels impossible to have a “calm center” anymore when life has its thumb on the scales and keeps them so unbalanced.

My novel, Paint by Numbers, was begun just prior to NaNoWriMo, and as a first time participant in that grand experiment in madness, I emerged victorious. Yes, I wrote over 50,000 words in thirty days, and I had a ball during every single minute of it.

That novel now sits at just under 56,000 words. Yes, since the NaNo binge, I’ve written next to nothing in it, about two chapters. Part of that problem had to do with the chapter dealing with faith, one I hadn’t anticipated having to write in a book about self-discovery and reclaiming one’s life. It feels awkward, stilted, and altogether slapdash, and I don’t want that to be the case. I got stuck there for quite some time, much like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness, and only recently did I return to the book. The larger issue, however, has to do with my time schedule and my motivation level as well as the requirements of my Diana Ross-like muse.

I work four days a week, which sounds pretty choice. However, those are ten hour days. Add the thirty-minute-each-way commute, and that means eleven hours of my day are spent doing things that are, for lack of a better term, cerebrally exhausting. I teach English at a technical college, so my days are a constant battle to motivate and aid students in everything ranging from technical questions to ones of subject matter, and after getting home at 6:20 or later most of those days, the last thing I’m ready to do is sit down and create a new chapter. In fact, I rarely have the wherewithal to read a book written by someone else. How pitiful.

In addition to being a teacher and a writer, I am also a musician (albeit not a very talented one). This means that I enjoy playing as well as writing, though I must work more diligently to be successful at it. Currently, I’m involved in my church’s orchestra, and that means Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings are off the table as far writing time is concerned. (However, I wouldn’t change that for anything. I love serving with my talent and spending time with the other players!) I’ve also recently joined a local wind ensemble to get more time behind the mouthpiece and to make friends in the area who share my passion, so Monday evenings vanished as well. Playing for pit orchestras and other events have also cut into my time and sapped some of my creativity, but I don’t want to give them up because I enjoy them too much and because it is something my husband and I can do together. We met in college in the music program, and it is something that always serves as a common denominator in our relationship.

That leaves Tuesday and Thursday evenings as well as the three day weekend. Writing on Fridays was working out for a while and served to help me fill up pages with words, but I’ve been using Fridays these last few weeks to recover from long weeks filled with work and multiple performances. (For example, with the Cinderella pit I mentioned in my last post, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings were devoted to pit as well as a 3:00 PM matinee on Sunday. This past Saturday was a double header. There’s no time to write when you’re flipping pages or trying to grab a meal between shows.) Add onto this the need to buy food, keep a relatively clean house, and spend a little time with family, friends, and pets, and my time for writing grows slimmer and slimmer. I tried to cut working out totally out of my schedule, but I can’t really do that much longer. Caring for my body will again become another thing that I need to get in at least three times a week.

So now, we come to the heart of my writing dilemma.

I have been writing as of late. Oh yes, yes I have. I’ve written several poems and a handful of short stories for various projects and groups I’m involved with, and two of the stories have been pretty darned good. However, I want to finish Paint By Numbers so badly it makes my teeth ache, and every time I have time and energy enough to devote to it, I sit down and nothing flows from the tap. At least not the way it did during NaNo. The difference was that I was focused utterly and completely on that book. My writing group suspended work for the handful of us brave (and/or stupid) enough to take on the challenge, and I could put aside all my other activities without guilt.

I didn’t care that I wasn’t working out and that my body was losing out a little, I wasn’t concerned with community bands or pit orchestras, parts of the house went to seed, and I was down to eating dry cereal and applesauce by the end. That was an acceptable lifestyle for me for a period of thirty days, but I couldn’t stay there forever, refusing to grow up like Peter Pan and his Lost Boys in Neverland. Some level of compromise must be attained to live a life worth writing about and having the time to actually write about it. I have yet to find that balance, and I don’t even know where to begin. I just know that I the book can’t stay in writer’s limbo indefinitely. Unlike the millions of zygotes “chilling out” in fertility clinics, I think this baby of mine has a limited shelf life. I don’t want to lose something that has real potential to the malaise of time.

 Ray Bradbury once said, “You fail only if you stop writing,” and I can happily say that I haven’t stopped in a very long time. I lost the fire years ago, and for far too long, that part of me lay dormant and almost dead. But she’s alive and awake and demanding attention now, my muse. I just have to figure out a way to appease her on a limited schedule, which is hard to do with a diva.