I had to get some paperwork done the other day. This task was one among many I’ve been knocking out on the path back to teaching. I had to leave home around 8am, which is the time I start writing. The whole business took all morning. My usual writing time had vanished.
Each day, we’re given a set amount of time. Before we can do what we want, we often have obligations. Disregarding them is not the way. We must first satisfy our commitments, but when we get to a place where we have time for ourselves, we may not know what to do, nor have the motivation to do anything, if we did.
This is the real test. Not whether we can do what we want if we had all the time we wanted, but if we can still do what we want after we’ve done what we had to do.
Systems are great, but life happens. There will be more of these tasks as time goes on. With teaching and otherwise.
To be a writer, to live the writing life, requires juggling. Reading, writing, revising, pitching agents, submitting to literary magazines, building and growing a brand, engaging with a writing community. That’s writing alone.
Now pair that with a job that brings in guaranteed income, time with your spouse and family, work around the house, exercise, and let’s be honest, no one can work all day every day, so you need some downtime at some point.
How does one keep it all in the air, in motion? How does one work within the limitation of time?
The reality is that you can’t do everything you need to do, let alone everything you want. It’s a game of priorities. It comes with the territory. Not just the writing life. Life in general. If you want to make something of yours, it takes time, effort, and dedication. Sometimes it means juggling less to juggle more later.
Like having only so much time in a day, you only have so much time in a life. While we may not all live the same lifespan, we all have the same limitation. But this limitation does not have to limit us, that is, we don’t have to let the fact that death comes for us all limit our ambition to achieve something more for our lives.
Here, writing has its appeal beyond the grave. The words I’ve written exist beyond me. My finite timeline contextualizes my work. Writing is important because it can exist outside of me, yet it is—or was—a part of me.
People can have a piece of my mind while I live and when I’m gone. My words are a time capsule for my life here, evidence that I lived.
But life is more than what we can leave behind. It is about living, which is about giving yourself to others. Your knowledge, your experience, your time. And it is about finding a way to juggle the many tasks required—paperwork included—to keep climbing higher.
Onward and upward,
Lee
