Time Crunch

As I write this, it’s a rainy Sunday.  I haven’t posted here in over a week.  I’ve had to pick up extra hours at work as a result of the office being short staffed.  I hope this is temporary, but have braced myself in case it is not, since it eliminates the availability of the time I dedicate each morning to writing endeavors.  For the most part, I’ve been diligent with my Morning Pages, but this weekend, suffered a lapse.  Writing three longhand pages first thing every morning has helped me maintain a word flow but having missed both days this weekend, I feel guilty. 

Due to the lack of available time, I’ve returned to the schedule I kept when I used to work full time, back when my daughter was a high school student.  But, instead of getting up to prepare breakfast and lunches, I lean over to grab my notebook, put on my glasses, wrap myself in a shawl and pick up a pen.  On the positive side I’ve learned, at 5:30 a.m. it is more pleasant to write than to make sandwiches.  There’s an owl that hoots from one of the remaining trees in our side yard…though from the distance of his call I can tell the loss of six trees there recently has altered his location.   

While I’m writing, a grey wash lightens the sky in the west.  The yard out the picture window comes up like an old photograph floating in bin of developer.  My handwriting loops and scrolls.  On some days, I purge myself of anxiety, on other days I add to my current work in progress, on the best days, I do both.  Regardless, each morning, when I finish, I’m relieved when I review the neat, consistent cursive filling those pages.

I’ve read over and over, that if I want to bad enough, I can always find the time to write.  For now, it appears that predawn is my time.