On discipline

This is just another reason why I love and adore Cat Valente.

And also a timely reminder from the universe to myself.  I’ve lost the last two weeks to me being sick and my son being sick, two things that I could do nothing about.  He’s actually been sleeping and napping well for a poor sick boy, but I’ve been so exhausted that I’ve been resting and napping at the same time as him.

And it’s frustrated me.  I’ve wanted to be writing, to be creating.  I’ve had story welling up within until it threatens to choke me and I’ve been unable to give vent to it.

More than once I’ve caught myself thinking “If only I were the kind of person who was content just being a homemaker and mother.”  With total respect to those who are and are fulfilled as such.  It’s damn hard work -  mothering is a job that never ends, and we never get holidays.  I never really realised that properly until I had a kid.

The thing is that it would be easy for me to just say “Okay, I’m just going to not try to push with the writing”.  I could just become a fan of daytime TV, spend my days going to playgroups and the like.  But here’s a secret – even though I love my son dearly, I would be miserable.  And if I’m miserable, I’m not going to be the best mother to him that I could be.  I want him to see me as a woman who is strong and accomplished, to know that women can be everything they want to be.

This year has been a bust so far for me writing-wise.  I’ve managed to keep up my reading and reviewing, but I’ve really done very little of the writing that I want to.  And yes, there are reasons for this, and I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

I have found myself getting frustrated listening to podcasts and reading blogposts and articles about how people write.  How they get to spend 6-8 hours a day behind the keyboard, or get up at 4am to get two hours of writing in before their kids wake up.  It’s time I suck it up and realise that I’m not going to get 8 hours a day to write (and hell, even when I *had* the time, I never spent that much time at the keyboard), and I’m never going to be able to get up at 4am to write.  My sleep and health are tenuous at the best of times.

So, it’s time for me to step back and take a good long look at the time that I do have and how I use it.  I’m lucky in that I have someone who can watch my son for me for one or more hours a day.  At the moment, he’s napping well in the afternoon.  I have all of that time to be used.  And I’m just wasting it.  I mess about online, on Facebook and Twitter and the usual sites.  I let housework bleed into those hours.

I need to make writing a priority again.  Accept that the house is going to be a little cluttered and disorganised (and even if I was spending hours a day cleaning, I have a toddler who will dismantle all of that within minutes), accept that I will not die if I miss things on Twitter.  I’m considering some serious pruning of my LJ/DW reading lists as well as my rss feeds.

There are some things that I cannot sacrifice, and that’s okay.  I need to be precious with my sleep, with my health in general.  Which means that I need to eat well (which I haven’t been doing while sick), I need to exercise regularly (which I have been doing).  I also need downtime, which for me generally means reading.  And I need to work on honing my craft all the time.

Monday, it’s back to the life of discipline for me.

Because, it’s as simple as thing: what do I want?  To write.  And so I will.

 

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.