time shortage consciousness

I’m sitting in my studio with its exposed brick walls and winter light slanting in through three windows. A record spins as I write this. I risk being called a hipster because I actually love seeing music play. There’s something special about seeing the needle move on the turquoise blue disk. Where I write is super cool. I inherited this midcentury modern metal desk and found the chair I use in another office in this old warehouse. (They let me use it.) A taco place is across the way. While I write, I hear the train whistle blow—and it just went by. One of the artists who works here has a dog named Abby who greeted me by barking when I pulled up at the loading dock.

I dig it all.

I set this room up exactly the way I want it, with plenty of books for inspiration, pencils and pens and supplies that make me smile, and whatever else I need to write—index cards, resource books, folders full of notes.

And I’m fretting because while I have enough space and enough supplies, I don’t feel like I have enough time.

This doesn’t make sense. I’ve already written my word count for the day. National Novel Writing Month requires 1,667 words per day to finish and today I wrote 1,702 and stopped. So, by objective measures, I’m good. Productive, even.

I look at what I want to do, though, and the gap between what I want to write and what I have written is so huge it’s overwhelming. Then I make lists of my projects and the status of all of them and fret more.

It’s been suggested to me that I take on too much. Perhaps I do. But the alternative—focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all others—hasn’t really helped me. It’s the reason why I haven’t published a book since last March. I spent too long trying to make one book right, and once I freed myself to work on more than one book at once, I got a lot happier.

But now I’ve swung far the other way, wondering if I have too many projects and if I’m ever going to finish these things. More importantly, if you’re ever going to read them.

(Of course you are. One is done. Many are getting there. I just need to keep going.)

Something always makes me feel like I don’t have enough time, though, to properly do everything. Ever.

Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit. — twenty one pilots

I think it’s because there’s such a gap between inspiration and execution—and then finally showing anyone anything.

(Incidentally, this is the reason why I’ve posted a blog twice a week all year. I needed to get words down and out and not just keep them on my computer.)

So, I tell myself to have patience. If I keep writing, the stories will come and be finished. They are getting further and further along, and I can see the progress.

But you can’t.

And that’s what scares me. That I won’t be able to finish them. That they won’t be able to touch the people they are supposed to.

That I’ll never finish.

I suppose I never will. I think that’s the creative process—at least the way I want to do it. I want to continually create. And part of that continual creation is not having things to show for it at all times.

“The artist, like the mystic and the renunciant, does her work within an altered sphere of consciousness. Seeking herself, her voice, her source, she enters the dark forest. She is alone. No friend or lover knows where her path has taken her.” – Steven Pressfield.

I see all these people on the internet—publishing a book a month, posting a drawing a day, Instagramming a photo an hour.

I have no idea how they do it. I feel like I’m writing constantly and it’s never enough to get anything done.

So, what do I do?

I write.

I remind myself that I worked on a project today. And I did it yesterday and the day before that. And while tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, at least for right now I’m writing.