This is in no way meant to make fun of those of you with a real and substantial need for money. And while this post is only semi-serious, there is a real point buried in here somewhere. About writing. Of course, it sounds (and is!) a work rant at the same time, so this might not be an entry you want to explore.
It does not diminish my request for you to send me your spare time.
It seems in the arts that we have a hard time making a living as artists. One of the way some of us cope with the whole feeding ourselves and paying our bills issue is we get a job. Sometimes, we plan ahead, and we try to get a job that allows us time to write. Say, becoming a teacher, and maybe having some time in the summer to write.
This summer, I seem to have made a critical error. I told the college I would work 270 hours over the course of the summer, primarily writing curriculum. I should have known better. There never fails to be something going on in the English Language Acquisition Program that demands my attention as its coordinator. There’s always an excuse available to keep me from writing curriculum.
During my first two weeks of summer, it was all about troubleshooting and getting summer semester started. Then, I took this groovy class on the Mahabharata, and came in a little bit during the week and on Fridays to do just sort of a minimum catch up on my job. This week, we had a special group of students come, and through a series of burlesque mishaps involving employee overwork (do you see a theme?) I had to give up all my writing and evening time coming in to the office to fix mistakes which I had fixed back in March and someone else unraveled for me.
Wow. I intend to take my time back from Kirkwood, sure, but I can see what’s going to ultimately happen, because it’s gone this way before. Ultimately, the curriculum writing is going to come out of my spare time, because the college will find ways to suck the rest of my time down. I am so burned out right now. I haven’t had a restful vacation since I don’t know when.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it would serve my college right, since they’ve used my paid time in other ways, and that they should just suck it up.
Well, I agree with that, except for a few things. First of all, my teachers need this new curriculum, and I am not prepared to pass this problem onto them. Next, my fellow English office staff would have all sorts of fall out from a variety of places if this were to happen. AND finally, it wouldn’t do anything for my reputation about the place, and I sort of need to eat and pay the bills. Oh yeah, and there’s the fact that I’m a sucker.
Where I see this time coming from, then, is my writing time. I see my novel writing time that I’ve committed to for two years pretty steadily disappearing.
Or maybe not…maybe you can help. You know all the time you’re killing time? Why don’t you send it to me? Five minutes here, five minutes there, I’ll take ’em. All those seconds you stack up on your dresser at the end of the day? Simply put them in an envelope and shoot them off to my address, which you can get privately via email. Heck, some of you may procrastinate for hours on end, and be so moved to make a large donation.
I can hear the wheels turning. You’re just not prioritizing, you might say to me. With planning, you can make anything work. If you were serious about writing, you might quit your day job and get down to it.
Sometimes, it just seems impossible. It may be difficult to write full time because of the money, the taxes, the health insurance, the uncertainty. Being “responsible,” on the other hand, brings with it other issues, like sleepless nights, giving up resting time, and having to struggle to slip in creativity.
I value what I have, but I also need something else. And you can help by keeping those minutes and hours coming.
Whoops! It’s time for me to see if I can entice a teacher into taking this job I have beginning on Monday. Because vacation and time for creativity is a valuable commodity. If you have it, value it, suck the marrow out of it, and revel in it.
Catherine
This is a great post. I don’t have a day job outside the home/farm, but sometimes I feel like there are a million obligations pecking away at my writing time. And yes, I _can_ and _do_ prioritize to make the most of the time I have, but there are some responsibilities I simply can’t set aside. So I do sympathize with you, and I also appreciate the reminder to enjoy whatever writing time I manage to scrounge.
And now I’m off to write for half an hour before I take the kids to the eye doctor!
Good luck to you – I hope things settle down so you can get your writing time back.
I’m painting bedroomS this month. I have lots of downtime while one coat or another dries. I can easily spare you a couple of hours this week.
Typing this with Kilz still stuck on my hands. It will take me a good 30 minutes to get all of this stuff off. You can have those too.