An old high school chum and I were talking at a recent lunch about our desire to write. He likes my blog and I like the blog he was writing while he was traveling in Viet Nam and the surrounding area earlier this summer. He had stopped posting midway through his trip and he has been urged by several friends about finishing the trip for them, via the blog. He told me his problem was “finding the time to write”.
That is my problem, too. Finding the time, as if there is some magic time, a bagful, that is hidden, under the couch, or behind the door, or in the kitchen cupboard, that, if I could just locate it, I could use for writing. I told him I had been analyzing the ways I waste time.
Wasting time--like it was garbage--a little here, a little there, until the day is gone and at the end there is more in the garbage heap than there is in the “something worthwhile done” bin. I live by the Protestant Ethic, even though I am not a Protestant. For me anyway, the Protestant Ethic is: get work done before engaging in pleasure. Pleasure is my reward for working hard. Work includes washing dishes, cleaning floors, gardening, washing clothes, paying bills, grocery shopping, making important phone calls, making dinner, helping my husband with a job, doing stuff for my mom, exercising. Pleasure is playing with my granddaughters, getting on the computer, checking email and answering it, going out to coffee or lunch with friends, reading other people’s blogs, reading the newspaper, doing a crossword puzzle, playing Angry Birds http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds on my iTouch, taking photographs, putting the photos on my Flickr site or organizing them, reading, reading, reading books or magazines or books about writing, taking a drive in the Miata. And then there is the writing. I love writing, but with all the work things and all the pleasure things I haven’t created a little envelope of time for writing.
I can’t even remember when I first wanted to “write”. I wrote a magazine in junior high for me and my friend, Anne, called “McCake” (after McCalls)--many pages, articles, fiction, pictures. I loved Mrs. Southworth’s composition class, but I didn’t think I was as good a writer as others in the class. I kept a daily diary then and dropped that practice when I got married and had kids, starting up again in the late sixties, but graduated to journals, which didn’t require writing every day and had a larger format for longer reflection. Sometimes I wrote down a description of a character I saw on the ferry, in Seattle, on the side of the road. Occasionally I wrote a long piece about an experience. I attended a writer’s group for a year. I went to a couple of writer’s journal workshops taught by a friend, who was a published writer. I just wrote, never saying to myself, “I want to be a writer”. Until I started my blog in October of 2005 . Pretty late in the game. But why not?
Okay, so.....this is supposed to be about wasting time and I just did something that could either be considered wasting time or research, depending on the spin I put on it. I went to my blog to see just how long ago I started it and began reading some of the oldest posts and some of the comments and then I started getting nostalgic because one of the regular commenters was my old friend, Jim Morgan, who died a few years back and his friend, Brownshoes (her blogger name), who used to comment but hardly does anymore, even though we are now “computer friends”, we never see each other anymore. And so it goes, turning left at the path and sliding down the rabbit hole of memories, and the time for writing gets eaten, like a delicious little cookie.
The idea here was to list the “time-wasting” activities and give the rationalizations for them. So here goes:
Reading and answering email.
Communicating is good for my writing, inspirational sometimes, but reading all the “funnies” people send is pretty much a waste, though I hate to blow people off by not reading them. On the other hand, would they ever know? Would they cut me off?
Reading the newspaper from cover to cover.
Again, good for writing--keeping up on current news, culture and how the world is evolving. And I have to know what is happening with Adam Lambert this week.
Doing crossword puzzles.
Good for the brain and for vocabulary--doing them every day?--maybe not productive. I'm the kind who must finish it, to prove I can.
Reading other people’s blogs.
Particularly important for the writer in me. What are others writing about, what are they doing with their blogs and their pages? To me it is research. Are they better than me?
Looking through the dozens of catalogs that come for me in the mail.
Total and utter waste of time, unless I find a hairdo I want to copy, that is, or a shirt, or pants, or.....
Reading the Quality Book Club and Book of the Month news.
Not doing it anymore. I canceled them both. In a month or so they will try to lure me back with free books.
Going to lunch with friends.
Not giving this up. A person who could be a hermit (such as I) must get out and be with people--besides I might spot a good “character study” at a cafe or coffee shop, like the older (than me) couple who were playing three handed cribbage with a younger man at the coffee shop while drinking their favorite brew. And talk with friends is inspirational, too. Who could make up a character like red-headed, big busted Mary, the Maintenance Woman, with a heart of gold and a mouth like a sailor?
Playing the game “Angry Birds” on my iTouch.
This is one I’m struggling with. Do I keep playing because the little screeching birds who are trying to obliterate the pigs that took their eggs makes me laugh out loud and it’s challenging? Or is it eating into time I could be doing something more important? Is there something more important that I could be doing between 4:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon? Lots can happen in 30 minutes--I could read an article in a writing book or magazine, I could write for 30 minutes on what I’m working on. I could edit. But my husband is usually in the room with me, so writing or editing is something I couldn’t concentrate on. For the time being, I will waste time with Crazy Chickens, as I call it, in the late afternoon and enjoy the belly laughs.
Reading.
A writer must read. That’s all there is to that--looking at style, noticing how an author puts words together, strings the plot along, begins, ends, grabs me or doesn’t. It’s a writing class. And after class I get to take a little nap.
I hope you understand that this blog post is me working things out--it’s not meant as entertainment, unless you think you are wasting time and want to see how I am making some of it seem important. My pact with David, the other writer, is meant to be challenging to both of us and he told me to write about the time we waste. And the word “waste” is subjective--maybe “spend” is a better word to describe what we do all day. We spend time doing what needs to be done, we decide how to spend the rest and why do we decide in the ways we do? This is probably totally boring to Dean, and to Dean I apologize. It also might seem like silly angst to some others, but this is the kind of dissection that a person who likes to write engages in. And since I am writing, it’s not a waste of time.
A few days before talking to David I decided the best way for me to write everyday was to write before I ever opened email, Facebook (communication again, but often excessive), or read blogs, because once I get going on those it’s all over for a couple of hours. And it’s been working. Once I get started writing I can’t stop unless I force myself to. That’s the way it should be, for someone who loves and wants to write. The future of all these words? Who knows? Surely not me, not yet. For now, it’s a triumph to get a regular schedule established. If I run out of time for all those other “wasters”, then so be it.
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