guarding resources

Regular readers* may have noticed: my frequency of posting is up. Way up. For the first time since I started this blog almost six years ago, I posted every day in a month.** Okay, the month was February, so there's a natural advantage there, but I didn't miss many days in January either.

People who know me in real life have been asking how I have had the time to blog so much, when I just returned to work and the time demands on me have increased to epic proportions.

It took a bit of thought but the answer finally became clear: this is my little corner of the world. All mine. At the moment, it is one of the few ways that I can be creative, express myself, do something for myself, no matter how silly or self-absorbed it is. Spoiled for years with giant pockets of solitude, utterly necessary to a unrepentant introvert like me, it's as if I am clawing out a tiny corner now. I don't have enough large blocks of time to knit or create or design, which is frustrating me to no end. But thoughts and words and phrases can be chewed over as my commute spools out, and spilled onto the screen once I have a few moments at night.

In full confession, I have not been too graceful about these demands on my days. This past Sunday, I woke up early to work on the Downton article, gleeful to find the rest of the house still slumbering. No sooner did my coffee finish brewing than Terzo wandered into the kitchen, up way too early, already in mid-whine.

I cut him off before the grumble was fully formed. "Nope. This is my time. I have things I need to get done. You can go back to bed, or you can do something quietly by yourself, but for the next hour you need to leave me alone." I felt like a dog, jealously guarding my bowl, snarling at the hand trying to take it away. But one of the realizations of the past two months has been just how much I need a little time by myself to feed my soul.

As we enter into this season of mindful deprivation, I am going to try not to mind the time deprivation quite so much. But I also need to develop better discipline to carve out more of those times, in a way that doesn't impact my family too much. I have already started waking up earlier. It's the only place to cut.

My messy corner of solitude

* To those of you who have joined recently, welcome. I love everyone's comments, even though Blogger's limitations do not allow me to respond to most people directly. I'll switch to wordpress one of these days, when I have more time.

** Hopefully this is not driving my regular readers crazy.