Once upon a time...

I started a blog post about some stuff, got about 10 minutes into it and walked away. That was about a month ago. And since then, I've convinced myself that I'm too tired/too uninspired/too busy to blog. Blog avoidance has become an increasingly easy thing to do for me, but for whatever reason, I can't simply give it up.

I NEED to write. And not just Facebook updates or Tweets. But carving out that space in my day and my mind has become damn near impossible.

I recently went to New York for work. It was my first trip there in at least seven years. I fell in love with that city like never before. I went to parts of town I'd never seen--the upper west side, Harlem, Morningside Heights, Hell's Kitchen, Brooklyn. It was magical. I could never ever live there--it's just not suited for my personality. But man is it ever a wonderful place to visit. While there, I got to spend some quality time with one of my most favoritest people, my friend Tom. He's writing a novel, and he's shaping his life around the writing of it. He's arranged his work schedule so that he works from 11am to 7pm. He wakes up each morning and spends 2 hours writing while his mind is still fresh. He arrives at work in a better mood. And then when he comes home, he doesn't feel the pressure to write when he's mentally and physically done with the day. He is, understandably, happy with this situation. And I am forest green with envy. He has also planned a 5-day trip to Chicago (where he used to live and where the novel is set) to do a bit of research, but mostly to immerse himself in the place and write, write, write. Fucking lucky bastard.

Granted, he doesn't have a family (he's single, no kids) and he's got a VERY generous time off policy (unlike me who currently has 3 hours in my time off bank), so he can DO this kind of stuff. I am proud of him beyond words. But his ability to mold his life around his passion for writing only makes it more painfully obvious how impossible doing the same would be for me. I can't even imagine what kind of machinations and sacrifices it would require to commit to the art of writing like he has.

And so I grab the random creative impulse (I wrote a haiku about rain lillies yesterday while I was driving to get The Geej for a doctor's appointment), and try and subsist on what little nourishment it provides my soul. I also take advantage infrequent moments like this one (I've arranged with BH to stay late at work, finished what I needed to for the day, and am not having to rush out the door to get home) and try to utilize it to, you know, write. But this that I'm writing? Not very inspirational, is it. It's like one big ol' pity party for myself.

How do I find the balance between what I have to do, which is be a wife, a mother, a working/bill-paying member of society, and what I want to do, which is focusing on and exercising my creative mind? I have almost no solitude, ever, and I feel like I have to ask permission for "me time". Then when I actually HAVE some time for myself, I have a list of 10,000 things I need to do, and none of them is "sit your ass down and write".

Oh, what to do, interwebs. What to do...