By 9 a.m., I sit down at my desk to work on my next novel.
I’m on page 191, and by noon, I’ll be on page 194.
Then I’ll eat lunch, work on another writing assignment and run some errands.
Somewhere in there, I’ll squeeze in a workout.
Before I know it, it will be 2:45 p.m., and my toddler will be home.
With such limited free time, I’ve had to learn how to make every minute count.
But it wasn’t always like this.
During my early 20s, I lived as if time didn’t exist.
I had several part-time jobs and shockingly few responsibilities.
But I knew better.
The key to success was keeping your butt in the chair.
And yet, my butt was never in the chair for more than an hour at a stretch.
When I was 24, I moved in with my boyfriend, but little else changed.
We adopted two kittens, and the four of us worked from home.
He wore headphones, and I wore my laptop and the cats.
Too much freedom, I found, can feel as stifling as too littlepurposeless and desperate.
I was like an eccentric billionaire with a fiction habit, minus the billions.
I never needed to shower or change out of my pajamas; I was the Howard Hughes of Brooklyn.
After two years, we moved several states away so I could go to grad school.
My boyfriend became my husband.
I started teaching and taking my writing more seriously.
We workedin separate rooms!
with doors!and soon my days filled up.
I wrote stories and novels, I taught, I read.
I wrote, I taught, I read.
It was like finding religion, or running a marathon.
A small press published my short story collection, and then a major press bought my first novel.
Suddenly, I was in a real hurry.
Time was a countdown clock, ticking away toward the great unknown.
I have never worked so fast in my life.
For the next six months, I did little but write and go to yoga.
I finished the book ahead of schedule, unsure that I’d actually written it.
Do you know the feeling when you’ve got the option to’t remember what you had for lunch?
That’s how I felt about writing the book.
I knew it had happened, but I hardly recognized myself doing it.
Today, my son is just over a year old.
for find time to write, I have 20 hours of child care a week.
But now it’s barely enough time for my brain to click into gear.
I think what I’ve finally figured out is that all the free time I used to have wastoolimitless.
I was accountable to no one: no boss, no partner, no deadlines, no kid.
Now that my free time is restricted, every minute feels like a tiny drop of gold.
We sit, we read the same book three times in a row, I sing badly.
Would I want those empty days back, the days I could have stayed in bed?
I can still squeeze in a matinee here and there, to sit in the dark eating popcorn.
But I have to make a conscious decision to do so.
I believe that’s what they call “having it all.”
The rest of the day will zoom by, and I won’t mind it one bit.
