A month ago, I started at a new part time job as a barista/waitstaff. And to be honest, it’s been a great experience so far. I’ve learned new skills, my co-workers are amazing, and I finally have some extra money to spend. But one thing I have been struggling with is fitting in my writing. Before I started at this job, I was a full time writer. I could structure my days pretty much how I liked, and fill them with whatever I wanted to. But now I’m working, and suddenly, that massive space of time I have to work in has shrunk down to weekends, evening hours, and whatever spare cracks of time I can steal around my shifts.
It’s not even that I don’t have any time to write in at all. I’m lucky enough that I don’t have to work a full-time job to support myself. However, what I am struggling with is adjusting my expectations to my new schedule. Instead of writing tens of thousands of words in a week, I’m having to lower my expectations to writing say, three times a week. People who go to school, or who have been working for a while, are probably looking at me right now like ‘welcome to the real world Imogen’. And know, I have a rather idealistic writing life really. But that doesn’t stop my writer brain from beating itself up when I ‘fail’ and can’t cram writing in at the end of a long day. It counts days as wasted, or not productive when I can’t squeeze in more than a single page of editing.
Something I’m having to remind myself of at the moment is that I am more than just a writer. Obviously being a writer is a hugely important thing to me, and I one day want to be able to support myself fully off my creative work. But at the moment, being a writer is only part of who I am. I’m also a barista with work commitments to fulfill. I’m part of a family. I am a whole person outside of being a writer and that means that sometimes my free-time needs to be taken up with other things, like running errands, going to medical appointments, getting to the gym, going to a choir practice, or even something as simple as changing the sheets on my bed (side note: does anyone else have those simple tasks that they just hate doing for no real reason?)
Just because a day didn’t have writing in it doesn’t mean that I wasted my time. It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t productive. It just means that the way I was productive in weren’t the creative writerly ways that I value the most. It’s a slow process, adjusting to a new schedule, to the new demands on my time, and I won’t lie, I do sometimes wish that I had all the empty hours I did before. But this change is also great. It forces me to be more focused with how I spend the time I do have. It puts more emphasis on the other important parts of life. It makes me be responsible for making sure things get done, including writing, instead of wasting my time. And it makes me get out there and face people and push past my comfort zone, something that will have positive effects on my writing life too.
I am a writer, but I am more than that, and while I wish every day could be nothing but writing, and while I get frustrated at my apparent lack of progress sometimes, I feel like it’s super important to remember that we are more than just writers. we are people with many roles and responsibilities. Just because I didn’t write anything in a certain day doesn’t mean that I wasn’t productive overall. It just means that I need to balance all areas of my life, and value what writing time I do have, set more realistic goals and expectations for myself, and be ready to work as hard as I can for the things that are really important to me.
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I know how you feel, Imogen! I was writing and editing full time before this summer, and now I’m working two jobs and going to school. I can’t remember the last time I worked on my latest novel. (Side note: one simple task I dislike is doing laundry.)
Regardless of how much your writing time has shrunk, you’ve got this! I also like the perspective of being MORE than a writer. Even when we have “the time to write” more, I think it’s important to remember.