Yeah, Yeah, I know. We’re all busy. We all wear a lot of different hats in life. I teach, I write, and I parent. It doesn’t always happen in that particular order. Priorities shift daily. Time bleeds out of my as if I’ve severed some existential artery. Last night, I fell into bed at 9:00pm like a corpse. This morning I woke feeling not much livelier than an awkwardly reanimated corpse. Why in the name of Odin am I so tired?!
That was the question I had on my brain when I sat down to do my morning pages. [side note: I’m back at Julie Cameron’s self-guided course The Artist’s Way. Journaling daily in the mornings is part of the program]
…anyway, I just could not understand the level of fatigue plaguing me this morning after getting an amazing eight full hours of sound sleep last night. Is my thyroid slowing down? Am I developing a vitamin D deficiency (again)? Could low-grade depression triggered by the start of a new school year be the culprit? What? What am I missing?
So, I recapped this past week, I wrote everything out on paper. Once I saw it all, I was flabbergasted but had my answer. I am busy! Like, Hermione Granger with her time turner level busy.
Between lesson planning forward a few weeks (necessary to keep me from completely losing my mind) for three different high school science courses, scoring varsity volleyball games, prepping way too many solutions for a diffusion and osmosis lab, doing one-on-one check-in’s and phone calls with my new advisees and their parents, attending my bi-monthly meeting for the North Shore Writer’s Group, getting my eldest to Scouts, and meeting my Friday submission deadline for the Widgets & Wizards novel-writing class I’m taking as part of my graduate studies, I was in near constant motion. And, like a complete goober, I decided to start lightly restricting the ridiculous volumes of food I was shoving into my face so I might stand a chance of losing a bit of the weight I put on during my first year of grad school (you know, so I can fit back into my work clothes and not look obscene).
The start of a new school year always knocks me down for a few days. It’s the sudden shift in mental alertness that does it. This year, though, this year I feel like I’ve got a brutal case of jet lag mixed with seasonal allergies and a touch of the flu. And the load doesn’t look like it’s going to be lightening up any time soon. This coming week is even busier than last week was. Tonight it’s a PTO meeting. Tomorrow I’ll be back at the volleyball scoring table, and Thursday night I’ll be leaving the house at 7:00am and returning home from my teaching day at 9:00 pm thanks to it being “Parent’s Visiting Night.”
If I’m going to make my next submission deadline, I’m going to have to be on my organizational A-game. Part of that means MAKING TIME TO WRITE! Parenting might have to take a back seat to the teaching and writing this week. Thank Thor I’ve got a loving and supportive spouse who, because they’re a creative individual who went back to school to study their specific creative medium, understands and supports me and is willing to step in and pick up the slack when necessary. And this week it will be very, very necessary.
Last night, I added another 800+ words to my WIP. Today, I need to match that or do even better. I got a very encouraging note from my mentor this morning saying I’d nailed my MC’s voice in my last submission, so I’m feeling optimistic that I’m on the right track.
As for writing, [deep breath, cracks knuckles, swigs coffee], here we go.
What times in your year do things tend to pile up on you?