The Pressure of Too Much Time

You thought you wanted it

Years ago I left several creative writing professors (men, older, tenured) speechless when I said I had realized I would never run out of ideas for art. I would simply run out of time and die. 

At the time, my son was young and as I have done for the majority of his life including now, I was parenting alone. Every spare moment I could steal, I wrote. 

When he napped, which for the first six months was only on my body. When he had gymnastics class. When he explored the sticky playground at Burger King. When I paid—dearly—for a babysitter. I didn’t get lost in social media black holes. I didn’t travel to an inspirational spot and get all set up neatly. There was no time for perfect. Or inspiration. Or neat. 

When he went to preschool, which was only two days a week for a scant three hours at the community center, I brought my laptop and wrote in the lobby, because leaving and coming back to get him wasted too much time.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Time governed my life. Time was the thing I thought about the most. I hunted it. I dreamed of it. I never had enough. It went so fast. I was, like all mothers, exhausted, but the hours after my child went to sleep at night were precious, I stayed up and worked. I had to squeeze out every second.

The only certain thing about art and parenthood is that both change. They don’t necessarily get better or easier. They just get different. So, recently my teen, like most kids his age, started wanting to be alone in his room. He closed his door. He let me be.

It hasn’t necessarily helped. 

Life rushes in to fill the empty spaces. His demanding school piles on the homework, meetings, obligations, and expectations for parents. I have to shuttle him to social events, practices, friends’ houses, games. My day job has changed and become more consuming. 

And maybe this is a lie I’m telling myself—because how else will I get through?—but I’m honestly not sure I create better with this more (in theory, but in practice just different) time. 

Only once have I had the opportunity to attend an artist colony. It was two weeks. I loved every second, but one of the closest friends I made there, also a parent, and I used to joke that we didn’t have an art breakthrough; we had a sleep breakthrough. We got to sleep in for the first time in years. 

I didn’t necessarily write more in those two weeks. Still, I have to believe I wrote better later because I got that rest and that community. 

The short answer about time and do we actually create better with more is: it doesn’t really matter in my case and likely in yours too. Unless I win a MacArthur, the lottery, or marry a prince, I don’t see a life with a ton of free time. That’s true for most people without full-time nannies or trust funds. The rest of us have sleep debt, but we have art debt too. And the obligations are higher than I can count.

So whatever the amount of time is, and we won’t really know until the end, what are you going to do with it? And how are you going to hold onto what you have right now—not just time, but memories, experiences, the subjects of art—and call them back later?

Sometimes you have to stock up, on all things. There will be lean times, not only of freedom in which to create, but also of joy, of companionship, of things to create about. You have to stock up on those too. And save and hold tight.