Feb 27 2009
Finding Time
How do the hours go by so quickly? Compared to the list that faces me today, I have way too much to do and not nearly enough time. Why can’t I ever get everything done?
I’ve managed to post pretty much every day this week, but sometimes I can barely get to it. I’ve managed to get my kids bathed when they absolutely need it (nope, not every day–not enough time), to do laundry before everyone’s underwear runs out, to deposit checks, get kids to school, etc., all the absolute necessities. But I have no time for anything else.
Perhaps it’s all a matter of perspective. I suppose, if I didn’t have much income (I don’t, but my hubby brings home enough, thank goodness), I’d be ranting about how I can barely feed my kids the cheapest meals I can come up with, but I have no more for anything fun. No ice cream, no splurges, no new shoes when my old ones wear out. No new tires, even though the ones I drive on are balding. And these concerns would be more important than my previous rant. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be complaining.
But that is not my problem, and in my life, since the financial need has been taken care of, I have developed other ones (I cover this in another blog). My problem stems from a fear–a horrible fear–that my life won’t matter in the long run. I fear that I will die, and though my family members may be sad, I won’t have left anything memorable behind. The laundry I washed will get dirty again, and someone else will wash it. The teaching job I once did is filled by somebody else, and even if that somebody doesn’t do as good a job, no one really knows or cares. Everything goes on.
But, and I know this is selfish–I want to leave a hole behind, and, even more, I want to leave something real behind, something for people to read, to enjoy, to learn from, to change their lives with.
And that’s why I write–when I have time…
And that is why I NEED MORE TIME!!!
(Whew! Now I got that off my chest, I need to go clean the bathrooms… No time! No time!)
This is why I write, too. I suspect it’s why many writers write.
I’m interested in your depiction of your teaching job …. perhaps new students NOW are being taught by someone else… but the impact that you had on the students you taught has not and will not be undone by that.
Just as the interactions you have in all aspects of your daily life don’t get wiped out if they don’t happen every day.
I love to write…and I would love to someday manage to FINISH something and try to get it published…
but even if I never do, that won’t undo the many other ways that I have left something behind….. the stuff I know about and the stuff I may never know about….
so many people have touched my life in ways that they’ll probably never know… that doesn’t give it any less value.
I feel the same way. My hope is that my writing will outlive me in some way. Maybe it’s a little hokey and overly optimistic, but it keeps me picking up the pencil.
http://salesandmarketingtips.today.com/
Teaching does make a difference, Flit… but it’s a different kind of change created there. It’s far more motivational (at least in my classroom), and involves much more life-coaching. Not only do I want students to be better writers, but I want my courses to affect their enthusiasm for their future, their level of thought, their consciousness of their role in the world, etc.
But writing can do that for people I never meet, for people who live long after I am dead. And THAT is why I need both teaching and writing. I imagine I will do both until I die, at least I will if I’m lucky.
So glad you joined the conversation, ndtii95. And I think there’s nothing wrong with a little hokey optimism. It’s better than scathing self-hatred or hermit-inducing misanthropy.
And I am glad, aw2500, that you write for those reasons, too. Far better than writing just to make a million dollars (and not only because that sets up most of us for “failure,” while even affecting one reader with an unpublished novel is priceless).
And Stephanie, I do not envy you your own weekend. I just spent two days in the woods with my church’s youth group, feeling my own connection to the trees, to nature, and to god, not through any religious exercises (there weren’t any), but through silence, hiking, a cup of chai here and there, and some good, deep conversation with other parents who needed precisely the same thing. Now my kids are napping, I’m relaxing at the computer, and in a little over an hour I’m taking off to see one of my plays presented reader’s theatre-style at a local theatre. All in all, Friday was most hectic, and I must remind myself to take life a little more slowly.
I write for much the same reasons, and like Flit, never manage to finish it. I think time is an issue for most adults, especially in today’s fast-paced “now, now, more, more” world. We tend to take on a lot and run ourselves ragged. Personally, I haven’t had any time for my Today blogs for a while, due to website creating and marketing, despite constantly saying I’ll fit it in.
I hope you all manage some time in your schedules to do something that’s important on a personal level, not just something needing done. Shakespeare, that weekend out with your church group sounds lovely…I’m glad you had a good time and got to relax.
I sympathize as well, Shakespeare; thank you for voicing what seems to be a common drive. While it might seem like a morbid perspective, I’ve always thought that a way to measure the meaningfulness of a life is whether people who never met you will mourn your death, will feel an absence in their world, will lament the end of whatever you are able to create. Of course it is possible to have influence without a concrete creation like a book, and we have many opportunities to touch the lives of strangers, but I’ve still always felt like writing is the way. I remember the times when some of my favorite authors died, and how depressed I was that the world - and, more selfishly, I - wouldn’t be able to read anything further from them. It’s a beautiful kind of influence, and one that I’d like to have, but like everyone above it’s hard for me to find the time. Maybe the problem is that so many reading/writing types are teachers, a job that has so much take home work? (That isn’t my problem yet but I’m attempting to make it so.) Or perhaps it’s just society at large. In any case, I hope that you find what you’re looking for, or at least find time to write.
A postscript to what I commented above: Hollywood tragedy gave me an epiphany, or perhaps more like a realization of the obvious. Natasha Richardson and Heath Ledger were great losses to the world of art and entertainment, and just as in the case of deceased authors we mourn that they are no longer able to create, to act, to be visible to the world. But what seems even more tragic to me and most people - even to most media sources - is that Matilda will grow up without her father, and that there is a tragic hole in Natasha’s family, one of the rare domestic success stories in Hollywood. So we should definitely still want to write, to create, to make a mark on the world, but it’s worth bearing in mind that even the most influential artists want to and should be most remembered for how they touched those closest to them. Hopefully we can all find space for personal expression (and maybe fame and fortune) and for family.
WOW that was a sappy post, but I thought I should share…
No, you’re right, jreader… and that’s the main reason why my writing so often loses out to my kids and family. I fit it in when they are otherwise occupied, when hubby’s at work, when everything else is done.
The last thing I would personally want is to be known for my great novels and because I was an absolute creep of an individual.
I just want to share my joy with someone besides those closest to me. But they get me first, and they get far more of me than anyone else.