Does this look familiar?

I think anyone who has tried to write something, anything, has run into this. I have found this to be the single biggest challenge to being able to maintain a blog or start a writing project. I have a a young family and I want to be an involved parent. I also have fitness goals that I’m trying to reach. I like to think that I’ve been at least somewhat successful with these endeavours (I spend a lot of enjoyable and quality time playing with and looking after my children and I’ve lost 16 kg or 36 lb in five months via my diet and exercise program). Add to this my share of the chores and my job and the price has been that I have neglected almost everything else. I have had little time to do any creative writing (though I’m not sure if you would consider rather dry essays on political philosophy or economic theory to be that creative) or even much reading (my to-read list continues to grow, both physical and electronic) and often I find that when I do find some time it takes me forever to get into a proper frame of mind. I almost need to decompress my head a bit before I can attempt to be creative.

Ultimately, you need the help and support of your loved ones to manage to squeeze anything into a schedule as full as mine. In this case my wonderful wife has agreed to give me a couple hours each weekend as “Daddy Time” to do whatever I wish with. I have, of course, elected to use this windfall of time to write. it’s started off a bit inconsistently as I’ve also had the opportunity to take on some extra work on the last couple Saturdays but I have managed to squeeze in a bit of writing. As this extra work is only a temporary addition, I hope to start consistently devoting a couple hours a week to writing something for my blog. Maybe, I’ll even come up with a great idea for a short story or a novel (hey, it could happen!).

By the way, if you’re looking for someone who’s an entertaining writer, you could do worse than Celtic Illumination. He recently posted a short story he wrote called, “Kate” on his blog. It is one of the more moving pieces of prose I have read in a while. You can read it here. He apparently wrote it in ten minutes as part of a writing exercise on a week-long writer’s retreat. I might also note that he had, at the time, four children and obviously a wife who is a saint for letting him go and do something like that. 🙂