Fandom musings, part 1

[resonant]

I'm beginning to feel some stirrings of desire to get involved in fandom again, but mostly they just make me sad, because I can tell that there's not enough energy behind them to result in action.

But I had a blinding flash of the obvious the other day: My writing went away when my Saturday mornings went away.



Both the spouse and I were working full time when the kidlet was born, and we worked out a shift system so we'd always have one Parent In Charge, while the other parent, if present, was a Secondary Parent and could nap or run errands or otherwise have a tiny taste of freedom. The spouse was Parent In Charge on Saturday mornings, and I used to get up early, nurse the baby, and then slip away to Barnes & Noble to drink coffee and write.

I wasn't always productive, but I would leave my laptop at home and work in a little spiral notebook, which limited the amount of distraction. At a certain point, writing was the least boring of the available activities.

But when the spouse went back to school and we went to the commuter marriage model, I started spending weekends traveling to see him. So on Saturday mornings now, the spouse and I (and the kidlet if they're home from school) go to a coffee shop and hang out together.

Saturday mornings hanging out with the family in a coffee shop are lovely. Weekday evenings at home after work in a solitary apartment are also lovely. However, what they are *not* is a nice big chunk of uninterrupted solitary time, during my most productive hours of the day, just for writing.

(About the same time, a smartphone came into my life, so now even if I leave the laptop at home, I have a tiny, ubiquitous box of procrastination to deal with ...)

It's no wonder I haven't written a word since I came to Iowa.

Comments

[laurajv]

that'd do it. and it's a rough one.

[resonant]

I used to write Sentinel stories with a sleeping baby on my shoulder. Life is kind of weird.