Why I Write When I Don’t Have Time For It
by Maile Silva
Today, I am sitting on our back deck with my computer on my lap. My skin has a dried layer of salty sweat covering it from my jog with Winnie this morning, but there hasn’t been time to shower yet. I will need to do that sometime between:
1. Packing our youngest’s lunch (she needs to have food waiting for her in the car when I pick her up from her morning kindergarten class otherwise she’s a beast the whole ride home—she inherited her hangriness from me)
2. Vacuuming a floor that has four days of accumulated dust, dog hair, dirt clods, and food crumbs covering it
3. Preparing the guest quarters (aka The Lauffice) for my parents’ imminent arrival, as they are at this moment hurtling towards us in their car for our son’s high school graduation this weekend.
I don’t know if the shower will actually happen. A brush of the hair and a reapplying of deodorant might have to suffice. Because while I should be ticking off the items on the above mentioned list, I am sitting here, as I said, on the back deck. And I am writing.
There’s no hard and fast deadline for what I’m working on, so I’m not doing it for that reason. I’m not doing it because I have the free time (reference the above list again.) I’m doing it because I have a full week (and weekend) ahead of me. We’ll be hosting out-of-town guests and around 40 people for our son’s graduation celebration this weekend. I have shopping still to do. Decorating as well. Cleaning for sure. And cooking. Lots of cooking.
I know that to do all these things well, I need to be balanced. Maybe you don’t know what I mean by that. Maybe you have a different word for it, but basically, I mean, I need to be fully operational. And I know that writing, for some strange reason, allows that to happen for me. So I am writing in the shade of a Japanese maple with the panting breaths of my dog beside me as she plays with her chewed-up, yellow frisbee.
I guess we are both playing, you could say.
And that’s a good way to start a day.