I've been in my brain a lot lately. Fall is my working season. I am inevitably inundated with work from now through the new year. Somehow, I forget this every year. Then October rolls around and I try to schedule birthday shenanigans only to find I'm completely booked up.
This is in no way unique to me. My friends are booked through November. Fall seems to be a time of big shifts, and this year is no exception. Everyone around me is dealing with big, heavy things whether for work or in their personal lives. For me, this season has been a combination of both.
A little breakdown of what this means: I accepted a new packet of writing for one of my clients. That's eight more articles a month for a total of 16. It totals about 10 hours of work all told, but it means rebalancing my daily schedule to accommodate it. There are some big growth points happening with all three of my kids. I requested more work from my main job. And it looks like I'm moving into a more lucrative seasons with my third client, which means more hours per week reading and responding to students. I'm also teaching a one-off class this weekend that promises 6 more hours of upcoming work. It's scheduled right in the middle of everything else, so I'm both looking forward to teaching it and moving past it.
I love scheduling, so having a lot on the books isn't an issue in that regard. What I'm not great at is making sure I have plenty of time for me. One of my personal goals for years now has been to write. To write the hard things and to write them because I need to. And then to publish that writing. When my schedule is packed, it's easy to avoid doing that work. But avoiding it means I also don't create the bigger opportunities I want for myself such as publishing that work. And if I don't publish, I lose myself in other areas.
I write really hard things, so I'm not beating myself up about this avoidance, but I am frustrated. I make my own schedule. That means I can prioritize time for writing in my day. But then I have this conversation with myself about how it is going to push other tasks off track. How income has to be a priority right now because it's how I get back and forth to my kids.
Honestly, these are all excuses. I can find the time to write these hard things and still do everything else. It's just, well, hard.
I mean, who wants to chip away at precious free time reliving and reshaping hurt?
Doing that work used to be the same as breathing for me because it was breathing for me. I lived in a constant state of crisis. Writing was how I processed life. It kept me tethered to myself when I wanted to get out of my body. Now, writing means I have to get out of my body. Out of my own head. Choose to go to those places I no longer necessarily exist. It's hard to choose that.
I think I'm getting closer to do that work. It always feels right around the corner, but now is about finding healthy ways to re-engage what has hurt me. There's a lot of grace I'm giving myself. And grace is not the same thing as excuses.