Time to Write?
Distant Dwellings #2: It's about time!
Oh, those slippery days…
“I wish summer would hurry up,” I grumbled to my mother. I stood at the door to the kitchen where she clattered about, banging pots, slamming drawers. “Don’t wish your life away,” she shrilled over the ping of the oven timer.
Wish my life away? Is that even possible? As an eight-year-old, I had no idea. I wished for school days to end. I wished for my birthday to arrive. I wished to grow up. Countless summers slipped away, just as my mother warned. Lately I’ve been obsessed with time — wrote a whole book of prose poems in which minutes and hours take the form of pesky, and sometimes malevolent, characters. I can fictionalize Time, but still don’t understand it. Whatever Time is, there’s never enough of it.
Popular Time-Management Tools
List tasks on a white board. Swipe clean when finished.
Jot notes into app on your phone. Send yourself emails or texts.
Talk into a voice recorder while you drive.
Write in the bathroom… Keep a notebook by the commode.
But…
Can time really be “managed”? Can hours be arranged like cut flowers, catalogued like recipes, or baked like bread? If you put time in in the oven, will it rise? Moreover, will regimental time-management tools work for poets who require spontaneity and surprise?
Psychology Today warns against depending on apps and online tools to make scheduling decisions. Instead, the journal describes several common-sense approaches.
I titled my book of time-themed poems WHISH to suggest both speed (whiiiiish…) and longing (wish). I worked on the poems for years, but didn’t have time to complete the project until I sold my demanding old house and moved into a condo. I loved the house, but don’t regret letting it go. WHISH won the Press 53 Poetry Award and will launch in April.
There are so many responsibilities that can’t be pushed aside— Family. Job. Urgent home repairs. Health care. What obligations consume your days? How do you make time to write? What are the rewards, and what are the sacrifices? Please tell us!
Time makes a sandwich of us, then takes a big bite.
"Can time really be “managed”? Can hours be arranged like cut flowers, catalogued like recipes, or baked like bread? If you put time in in the oven, will it rise? Moreover, will regimental time-management tools work for poets who require spontaneity and surprise?" NO--a big fat No.