On any given day there is a lot to do. A lot to manage and organize. Between meetings, obligations, teaching, preparing an exciting and engaging lecture, learning the magic of making a hot Prezi presentation, meetings, office hours, keeping up with the details of a new course, socializing with colleagues, reading emails, thinking about answering those emails, and more meetings, I am still trying to figure out how to make a moment in my daily schedule to write.
It took me so many years to call myself a writer. It took me even longer to consider the fact that I am an author. The ability to claim, comfortably the authenticity of my own writing voice was a long and hard struggle. However, now that I know that I am a writer, the issue is not what to write, the issue is that making the time and space for the writing process to happen seems to be harder and harder to come by.
I need to write, to live!
So many of my posts have been about how tired I am of racism, sexism, racism again, etc. But this one, this blog right here, is about forcing myself to write again. Damn, who knew that as soon as I began to regulate my inner stress, find ways to love and take care of self, enjoy the down time and talk to my children every once in a while, be downright happy in my relationship (read marriage here) I would loose the ability to write. The one thing that has always given me a boost.
I think at this point the challenge is not about publications, and meeting scholarly deadlines (which for some reason is no longer possible for me), but now because I am caught up in the every day, my mind is bursting with material, shit I need to get rid of and out of my head. In other words, I am backed up in a way that only a writer can understand. Then, if I am not careful, the thoughts and threads of my ideas begin to get garbled, confused and crossed and then it seems like it is too late to sort things out.
I need to write, already!
Words are starting to blend and morph into other things that make no sense, because the thought process is becoming inconsistent. Take for example this blog entry. It has taken me at least 5 sit downs, working on a paragraph here and a paragraph there to get to a point where I have something that I feel I can post. This is my current reality. I have found the methods to write in the past, but something has got to give. The writer in me is dying and I am performing triage right now. It took me way too long to get here and I refuse to go back, to go back to a moment when my voice was so low that I could not hear, recognize her strength, the beauty of her prose, the power of when her words came together and fit just so. I miss the rush of just writing and writing so hard at moments, that I get lost and then sit up, look back and read a bit and become amazed at myself and reminded just how good the rush of a good writing session is, have I really lost that?
I need to write, again!
Then I wonder, I wonder if the writing has stopped because I have changed. I am a different person now, I am a writer and an author. I have bigger things to consider, more expected of me and bigger expectations for myself. Maybe writing was my means of survival, now it is a part of life, entwined in who I am and how I move through the world. I need to write again, just after I cook dinner…
blog out.
