A friend once told me that if you really want to do something, first write down all the good excuses you’ve got not to do it. When it comes to writing, I’ve got a few:
- All the words have been said.
- I don’t have the right notebook or pen.
- People will think I’m a fake.
- People who didn’t like me in high school will say bad things about me.
- I can’t teach AND write.
- My kids keep interrupting me.
- It’s too late. I should be further along by now.
- I’ll wait until my kids are older.
- Nobody cares.
- I’m not that good.
- I’m tired.
- I’m hungry.
- I just got a text.
- I should check my email.
- I’ll look at Facebook instead.
- I’m way behind on laundry.
- I should grade papers or revise tomorrow’s lesson or brainstorm a new unit.
- I have nothing new to say.
- All the other authors said it better.
- I’ll offend someone.
- I’m not spiritual enough.
- I don’t have time.
This week I said goodbye to another group of college writing students. And the last words I left them with were: “Find that thing — that thing you don’t think you have time for or that thing you loved but stopped doing when you were 11 or 12 because you didn’t think you were good enough, and make time for it.”
As usual, I was mostly saying words I need to hear. Giving reminders and passing along wisdom that good teachers and friends have shared with me.
Maybe a couple of them were reminded that they do actually enjoy writing — but for others, writing is not the thing, but it’s something else: dancing, drawing, gardening, baking, yoga, reading — whatever. I tell them, just spend a little time on it, and maybe even release the temptation to think you need to be so good at it all the time. I read aloud this piece by Anne Lamott in which she urges us to find “half an hour of quiet time for yourself…unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour.” And then the students walk out the door to study for exams, and I head home to a house full of people who call me Mom, and the hard work begins — we have to figure it out. We have to fight for it.
Excuses are, of course, easiest when I’m the busiest. It’s so much easier to blame my lack of writing on this family I have (who insist on eating several times a day), the boys’ baseball schedules (three boys in baseball is no joke, just saying), the papers I need to grade (collected 143 yesterday + 17 ten-page research projects on Thursday), and the laundry I never put away (thank goodness for the door on that laundry room.) Oh, and that awful habit I’ve gotten into of checking all things on my phone — email, Instagram, Facebook — one last time before I go to bed.
But the reality is that I make time for what matters — and too often I find myself using my busyness as a not-so-clever form of procrastination. “I would, but first I need to…”
Just because something is good for me doesn’t mean it’s easy for me.
And this is especially true for writing. Red Smith said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
The month of May is a perfect storm for calendars — little league, end-of-the-school-year this and that, deadlines, and, and…but if not now, when? There will always be calendars, always be excuses.
So, I’m committing — on this Saturday morning when I tiptoed out of bed to steal an hour before the rest of my house wakes up — to taking the advice I offered my students about fighting for time for the things that matter in the months ahead. I know summer is coming and the pace of our household will slow a bit, but other things will be there too, including excuses.
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