I spent of yesterday doing chores about the house: lawn, dishes, laundry, etc. I also spent about five hours in a final push to “eat that frog” and finish editing a friend’s master’s thesis. This social contract has leveraged the most from my writing pursuits as it had to be done, for the most part, here at home. Any time I’ve had to spare that I did not work on it has been a guilty pleasure not only because he is a friend and I wanted to give him his money’s worth but also because he’s on a deadline to finish it and he paid me $250.00 to do it. I’m glad that, save for a few odd pages here and there, for the most part, it is done. Huzzah!
     Senior portfolios are next on the hit-list. Less a social contract and more a “…duties as assigned…” affair, it eats up a serious amount of writing energy. Each portfolio contains ten projects including three letters, a resume and a career-exploration essay which require serious evaluation—read: editing. I’ll not go into how poorly they’re written and how much time it takes to do them. Complaints get me no where. I just need to get them done and scored…which, unfortunately, means correcting their mistakes—and they are legion, in many cases failing them and returning them to their owners so they can fix them for a second round of grading wherein most pass (of course they have…I fixed all their bloody mistakes!) Whatever; the point is this week is going to be devoted to eating that frog and writing energy will be at a premium.
     In what spare time I have, I continue to hammer through my redeux of Holly Lisle’s “How to Think Sideways” Ultra course. I have done some exploring and writing in conjunction with that. It goes well. So far I find I am doing better than I did on my last attempt. I hope to keep it up and learn as much as I can. Her lessons and observations are useful and give me hope that this writing business is doable. I know however, know with the certainty of tomorrow’s sunrise, that unless I can carve out the time, ‘plant my flag’ so to speak, I will never write my books. If I don’t find the wherewithal to refuse certain family, career and social contracts AND maintain a disciplined writing routine, I’ll leave this life unfulfilled, with piles of notes and half finished manuscripts in my wake but nothing finished.
     Case in point, Prom in all it’s time-eating glory is pinking the school-horizon and from mid-April until May 11th, I will be working my tail off there too. Prom is no simple dance at my high school. It is a pageant on a Cecil B. Demille scale. Put on by the student council, it is a serious amount of work. Did I mention “…duties as assigned…” and who’s Student Council Co-advisor? Yeppers: that’d be me and those are my duties. There will be at least four post midnight work sessions in and around the 11th and very little writing will be done on the approach. Just thinking about it makes me tired.
     And, of course, I still need to prep lessons and deliver them and then clean up after them. Ah, the life of a teacher. Anyone who wants to be a writer and thinks that teaching is the way to go—all that extra time!—is fooling themselves, especially if they want to teach successfully as well as write. The sub route would have been smarter…too bad I love to teach 🙂
     Between portfolios and prom, however, is Easter Break. I don’t know about anyone else, but I hear choirs singing! I look forward to time to write and make significant inroads with HL’s lessons.
     On an amazingly happy note, one related to creativity, both a close friend (and author) and my brother started RPG sessions this weekend: a SW game and a RQ6 game and on Friday night I flew to, “…a galaxy far, far away…” and on Saturday sailed the seas of fate. A good time was had by all and a very much needed re-energizing took place.
     Ah, time waits for no man and duty calls. May the few who read this find the time and wherewithal to write and be creative. Beware you do not waste it!