When my kids were shorter than my knees, I always told myself that once they went to school, I would have time for me, and when that happened, I would write books to my heart's content. This went pretty well when my youngest started preschool in 2020. I would drop her off, head home, and immediately sit down to go to town on my keyboard for the next two hours. I had to set an alarm so I would remember to escape my imagination and go pick her up. My time was limited, so I made the most of it.
Oh, how I looked forward to having all three of them in school all day so I could write.
Last fall, the littlest started all-day kindergarten. I went into this school year fully anticipating finishing some ongoing manuscripts and writing one or two new ones. I would get into a good writing groove and by May I would be only a few steps away from publication.
Spoiler alert: none of that happened.
Instead, when I sent my baby to kindergarten, she was already reading at a second grade level. I knew she needed a few months to get used to school and to mature, but once the middle of year testing came along, it became clear that I needed to champion her into a higher grade level. As the year progressed, I spent more and more time at the school, helping her and her siblings. Suddenly, all these hours of time I thought I would have were chopped up into smaller bits. My stress levels increased as I worried about all three of my kids and their different tough challenges, so what little time I did have during the day between volunteering and dentist and doctor appointments was spent reading because that's how I survive.
My kids didn't stop needing me just because they were at school all day.
I also had the misconception that my husband would be busy working all day, and that would mean that he was taken care of and wouldn't need me.
(Insert laughing-crying emoji here).
Scott working from home means he needs me to be his social interaction, his sounding board, his "water cooler" buddy. He's been working on getting healthier and I've been dragged along on this journey (but not kicking and screaming. I'm a willing participant). This means taking time for gym dates and lunchtime walks. Our daily Yahtzee and Quixx games at lunch are needed for both of us, but they take time, and sometimes the only uninterrupted time we get together is during those precious school hours. While we've had a few bumps and bruises trying to balance what he needs from me with the time I need for myself, I think we've finally found that open line of communication.
School gets out for the summer tomorrow.
A few days ago, Scott and I decided to take advantage of "our last week of freedom" and go out to lunch using a gift card we were given for our birthdays ten months ago. When something is bugging me, it takes a long time to get to a point where I feel I need to share that burden with someone else. Finally, away from the mess and chaos of home, I told him what had been weighing on me for the past two weeks since I returned from the writer's conference I attended with our neighbor.
"I'm worried I won't have time to write this summer," I told him. "And I need to write because I'm so close to just giving it all up because I don't seem to be getting anywhere."
The look of shock, concern, and compassion on his face told me I could keep going. I don't need the work breaks to grunt and groan about how life is going. I'm an internal processor. I rarely get to the point where I need to work through personal thoughts out loud. So, when I told him how I felt like I was wasting time, trying to achieve this dream that felt so far away, I think he knew I was serious.
I'm not even very good at writing, I told him. I shared how I've been working all year (albeit sporadically) on a romcom manuscript that isn't working. After the conference, I felt I needed to scrap the whole series and just walk away because I was working in the wrong genre. I was frustrated because I felt like I'd never have anything to show for the time I spent writing.
He paused, then meeting my eyes he gently said, "But that's not why you write."
His words stopped me, and I remembered Sarah M. Eden teaching in her keynote address at the conference that we needed to find our reason for writing, and that it couldn't be to attain some degree of fame or a certain award. When I got home from the conference, I'd taken an hour to write down all the reasons why I write.
And Scott was right--money, publication, awards, none of that was listed in my "Why" document.
I've been so busy helping my family and chasing my dream as an afterthought that I've veered off course. While I have a clear goal of wanting to see my name in print, I also want to put my family first. And I don't want writing to feel like a job. I'm not ready to give it up as a hobby in favor of a career.
In that same keynote speech, Sarah M. Eden also challenged us to write something just for ourself. Put our best work and effort in and see our heart on the page.
And then she told us to delete every word.
Letting go of your soul in written form is not something I'm ready to do yet. But I am ready to reset and go back to the reason I started writing in the first place, utilizing words as a tool to make sense of the world around me.
Nobody blogs any more, but I'm still here. I remember how I felt when I was sharing and writing these personal essays on a weekly basis. I'd like to get back to that. There are memories and moments with my children I need to record, like watching my oldest confidently walk her little sister to her first full day of first grade in April and remembering how she used to cry every time I dropped her off at preschool. Or how all three of my kids called me while I was at my writing conference and begged me to teach them how to write their own books this summer. Now, when people ask them what they are looking forward to this summer, it isn't sleeping in or our trip to Yellowstone. They immediately start telling about how we'll be doing "Writer Wednesday" and their mom is going to teach them how to write a book. Their confidence in my ability to teach them astounds me. They have no doubts that I will help them "write a better story." It doesn't matter that I'm not published and outside of a few hundred followers on instagram, no one knows my name. They know me. Their friends and teachers know me.
They need me.
That's why I write.
