This spring, feeling the repetitive wear of two-decades of freelance work and novel-writing from my kitchen, I went back to “work” — the kind where you drive to an office, wear a corporate ID badge and have a lunch hour (as opposed to ALL the other kinds of equally valid and challenging types of work that take place outside the walls of buildings sporting logos).
It’s been amazing. I realized that having so much unstructured time was making me feel intense pressure to produce more fiction while simultaneously making me, well, blue.
Since rejoining the 9-to-5 (or in my case, since I’m on eastern time 6-2) crowd, I have less time to write and more I want to say. More ideas have come to me as I make my 40-minute commute into Seattle surrounded by mountains, water and cars, than in the four daily hours I labored in my home office.
Maybe it will get old. Maybe I’ll start being jealous of all those scads of unaccountable time. But, for now, for today, going back on the clock seems to have set me free.
I’m still teaching, freelancing and coordinating writing classes on the side. I’ve got less time for my fiction but it feels like it’s going better. And I’ve got less time social media, which is probably a good thing, too. So many thoughts to share about creativity and the internet and politics (ah!) but I also have less time to post here on the website. Hopefully, this too will be less frequent but better quality.
I hope you’re writing this spring. If you’re struggling, if you’re in a dark place, I encourage you to try shifting up the old life. Don’t be afraid of losing writing time. Sometimes that’s the sacrifice you need to make…FOR THE WRITING.
One person’s opinion.
Happy wave from my less-frequented kitchen desk!
