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Monday, August 29, 2011

Schedules?

It’s back to school time.  I find it comical that we wait all the school year for summer to arrive and then you wait all summer long for school to start.  Why?  I think it all comes down to schedules.  During the school year, it seems every moment is by the clock.  Get up at 6:00 a.m., first child to the bus at 6:40 a.m.  Hope in the shower.  Get up second child, and off to school by 8:30 a.m.  To work by 9:00.  Home by 5:30.  Activities of the day by _______ and on and on it goes until the last child is in bed by 10:00.  But summer comes, and there are no set schedules for the children and that makes life as an adult hard.

I love summer.  It’s the bright yellow sunshine, warm on my skin and face.  It’s dark green leaves blowing silver in the wind.  It’s the squirrels and the rabbits.  It’s the garden and the flowers and the butterflies dancing in the air.  I spend so much time outside and running around that my writing tends to be pushed aside, way aside.  But for a bit of editing and administrative crap I have not done a bit of writing in months.  I have note cards full of ideas that have popped in my head during these summer months that have yet to be worked into stories.  I have projects sitting half done, neglected and sad.  This happens every year.  Why?  Again, schedules I blame.  I am a night writer in general.  When the children are asleep and the house is quiet, I sit down and write for as long as I want.  In the summer, it seems my house is never quiet.  My teenager never goes to bed. 

Oh I can hear you saying, make her go to bed.  Ummm, do you have a 16 year old?  You can say its bed time, and you get an “Okay” but then it’s teeth brushing and face washing and “Can I watch a movie in bed?” and “Turn the radio down” and yeesh, by the time I get her settled it’s 11 and I am no longer in the mood to write, I’m just wiped out. 

Now that school is back in session, I am inside more, and there are less chores to do outside, and my house is finally quiet at a reasonable hour and guess what?  I am finally finding time to sit down and write.  Boy have I missed it.  I didn’t realize.  So, I say yay to school, even though I will desperately miss the summer. 

7 comments:

  1. This is the best time of year... it's still sunny and full of nature and yeah, you do feel like buckling down more. It's probably been hard-coded into us from childhood. They should make kids go to school all year long, maybe just one or two weeks off a year. Yeah, I like that idea.

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  2. I actually write more in the summer. My husband is home more and he and my daughter have their own playtime, which means I get more writing time. However, my daughter is starting school this year, three mornings a week, so I will have more writing time built into my day.

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  3. Yes, summer is busy, busy, busy. I haven't had nearly as much writing time as I would have liked to. Hoping, along with you, to get more done in the coming months!

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  4. Well normally I write more in the summer, except for this year, because down here in the Louisiana heat, I do anything I possibly can to avoid spending time outside! It's just miserable. My outside time is in all the other seasons down here. So since I didn't actually get much writing done this summer, I could be in real trouble when the cooler weather comes along. I'll have to force myself to stay inside and write then. So I better get my rear in gear and get cracking since we still have at least 2-3 months more of summer heat down here. Uggghhh. When you guys up north start griping about you are tired of the cold, I'll just be starting to think... awe... FINALLY some relief from the heat!

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  5. Hoorah for time to write! Since moving I've been crammed into this postage-stamp apartment with a three year old bouncing off the walls every minute of the day - and there's a three-month wait for preschool! So I feel your pain (to a certain degree; I only have one). Best of luck in writing!

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