With having five kids, my life has always been kind of chaotic and crazy. But summer always seems to add a different dimension to the busyness.
As summer gets underway, I find myself facing new challenges to the schedule: summer activities, kids off school and needing more attention, college kids home and adding to the busyness, and a calendar that fills up with trips, appointments, company, and camps.
Amidst the challenges of our busy schedules, we can often feel overwhelmed and decide to put off writing (or anything we’re passionate about) until we have more time. We think to ourselves, “I can’t work under such chaotic circumstances. I’ll wait until things settle down and I have more concentrated and uninterrupted time.”
I’m living proof that you don’t have to wait for the perfect conditions to begin doing what you love. If I’d waited for concentrated and uninterrupted writing time, I’d never be where I’m at today. Instead, I’ve taken my chaotic and crazy life and managed to write over twenty novels.
I love these quotes for their wisdom:
All of the above quotes are so applicable to my crazy life. In fact, they’re helpful to think about for any of us dealing with changing and chaotic schedules and wondering how we’ll be able to find solid writing time (or doing anything we love).
Here are three things we can keep in mind:
1. We can’t put off writing because we’re busy. There really are only so many tomorrows. We never know when our time on earth will be up. And let’s face it, we’re always going to be busy. Once we’re done with our current busy stage of life, we’ll start the next busy one. We’ll find different things to do, places to go, and activities that will fill our time.
We can’t wait until that someday when we finally have a block of free time before we decide to write. Because as the saying goes, someday isn’t a day of the week and will likely never come. Instead, we just have to make the time to write . . . now. We can usually squeeze in time for the activities that are most important to us. And if writing is something we want badly enough, we can fit it into our schedules, somewhere.
2. When we sit down to write, we have to use that time wisely. This is something I struggle with constantly. When I finally manage to grab writing time, I have to battle against the urge to check email or twitter or facebook.
It’s all too easy to tell ourselves, we’re only going to read a couple of blogs before we start working. And the next thing we know, twenty minutes out of our coveted hour of writing time is gone.
Whether we have 30 minutes or an hour or a day, we have to make a conscious choice to turn off the distractions, tune out the noise, and focus on the page that lies before us. We can’t wait until we cross off everything else on our to-do list. We must learn to consciously ignore all the other demands and to simply focus on our writing for that limited time.
3. Finally, we have to show up at the screen, even when we don’t feel like it. Ever notice how young children get excited about new activities? Before my youngest daughter started piano lessons, she was waiting anxiously for the day when she would finally get to play the piano like her siblings. But now that she’s been doing it a while, the newness has worn off and there are days when she would much rather do something else than sit down and practice.
And the same is true of most writers. We all feel that initial excitement when we start writing or when we begin a new book. But eventually the thrill wears off under the daily pressure to write something.
The only way to complete a book—and I do mean the only way—is to write on the days you feel like it AND to force yourself to write on the days you absolutely don’t want to.
What about you? How’s your summer shaping up? Busy? Chaotic? Crazy? How do you keep doing the things you love to do when life conspires to keep you from them?
Jody Hedlund
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Exactly what I needed to hear today! Thank you. 🙂
My writing laptop does not have internet, so I’m not tempted to check email or facebook. It does, however, have games. Spider solitaire, free cell, oh dear.
I agree with all you have said here, and pinned a couple of the quotes. For years I put off writing anything but a ladies’ newsletter for church while raising my children. When the nest emptied, that was going to be my writing time. Instead, we now take care of my mother-in-law in our home, with hospice workers coming in and out, not calling ahead or not coming when they said they would. That makes it difficult to schedule. Then my husband just started working from home some days a few weeks ago. His mother is in what was his office, so he works at the kitchen table – about six feet from my computer desk. A lot of his work is on the phone, and I just can’t concentrate to write when he’s talking. I despaired for a while, but I really felt God wanted me to write. So I just prayed for wisdom to know when and how. Now I take the days my husband isn’t home to write, and the days he’s here, I do the other things around the house that need to be done. Some weeks I have more writing time than others, but at least I am making progress now. I wish I hadn’t put off writing for a more ideal time. I’ve learned there’s not going to be an ideal time. But God can help find those pockets of time when we ask Him and look for them.
I’m retired and all our children are off on their own, so I have more free time now, but I find that everything takes longer to do now that I’m older! I’m looking forward to spending time with the kids and grandkids this summer.
My normal life seems interrupted during the summer. My church just put on Vacation Bible School this week, and I was in high gear for that last week and this. My normal exercise pattern was interrupted, but my normal church worship/Sunday school and part-time work pattern were not. In about a week and a half, my husband and I will leave for a two-week mission trip, which will be wonderful but anything but normal. Then after being back for about a week, I leave to go visit a good friend for about a week. In August my husband and I will go on a vacation/learning trip with my sister and brother-in-law, so once again things will not be normal. I’ll have lots to enjoy remembering, but it’s my exercise classes and life with the church and a part-time job that will get me back into my normal life. Change is refreshing and fun, but it’s also disruptive to our normal schedules.
LOVE this blog post!!
Thank you SO much, Jody!!