It’s another Wednesday, and I’ve joined a faculty writing group. I thought I’d take a moment to get settled as I’ve been skipping more writing sessions that I’ve been attending. More accurately, I’ve been skipping planning sessions at key moments, and missing those unplanned sessions.
The session lasts for three hours, though I haven’t figured out a way to create that much spaces so the max I’ve been able to justify has been half that. I can see how it would benefit me to have all that time, so I’m thinking in the background about how that could work. Nevertheless, the synthesis on the research is clear: writing in large blocks will not make up for regular and substantive contact with my writing over the week. These small, regular moments matter more than doing a big chunk at once, and for precisely the reason that everything feels like I’m starting all over. Again and again and again. And again.
That said, I think I created a metaphor about a table, with the legs representing various facets of one’s life: exercise, work, writing, family, and so on. When one increases, the other decreases. The most recent leg strengthening is my physical and mental health, which has been improving after a few months’ slump due to fried chicken, sour cream and onion dip, and whatever other misery. I’m now in a fervor of workout classes again, and I have a workout buddy for 3-4 days a week (I had another workout buddy for a total of 6 but lost them to a knee injury). This means I have to prepare even harder to make sure I have breakfast and lunch set up for the following day, and because I tend to cook the meals, dinner, too. I also changed my diet up; my A1C (blood sugar) was higher than I wanted, so exercise and diet have made it better than I can remember, which probably means my cholesterol levels are improving, too.
I’ve been journaling at work for about 10-15 minutes on what I need to get accomplished for the day, which yields a big list of things to do, and they are impossible to get done in the timeframe I’ve got, so I’m getting to work later because of the exercise, I’m then working later, and writing is getting pushed to the margins.
What’s working:
People are contacting me to let me know about their writing schedules. This is a huge benefit of all the early organizing that I was beginning to feel futile about. It’s the feeling you might have if you saw someone fall and gave them a hand up, then later down the road, you fall, and they give you a hand up. I’m very grateful for that.
Texting my adviser when I write, even at moments like these when it’s obvious my work is getting shaky. Keeping up this practice is slowly whittling away at guilt and shame that are ruinous to any writing attempt.
Giving myself permission to use this moment just to write about writing. I should have been using this last hour to write; however, I needed time to nail down my writing schedule for this week, which meant confirming appointments, emailing with writing buddies, and getting things on the calendar. I also needed time to just take a breath and talk myself off the metaphorical ledge again. I’m pleased to say the distance between the ledge and the ground is becoming less and less as I continue to understand this more and more as a process of developing a solid writing habit.