Going Inkless

     I was going to be a baker.  That was my sensible, practical plan for keeping myself fed while I wrote.  I was well aware that authors who could support themselves with their craft were rarer than authors with talent, and if I was going to build a life where I could write all I wanted, then I would have to have another skill people would pay for.  Since I always liked cooking and baking, it seemed like an ideal solution.  It was all still art, but it was practical art, everyday art with immediate use.  People would always need to eat.      Of course, I learned all I could in our own kitchen and read scores of cook books in our collection and the library's.  I would experiment whenever I could, took all the classes the school offered, and added two years of more focused vocational training.  The typical teenage jobs flipping burgers and making pizzas were serious business for me.      Starting a famil...

     I dreamt I was in bed one morning, lying awake, trying to get the last few minutes of rest before the alarm would ring.  Lists of what I would do for the day came rushing up.  They compiled themselves in steady ticks like an old printer spitting out one line, then another.  Still, I determined to stay prone, squeezing out every moment to which I was entitled.  I planned to hit the snooze alarm when the clock would blare.  I calculated the number of minutes that would buy me, the number it would leave me on the other side of the morning- how long I would have to get ready for work, and what I could do to compress the necessary tasks into the new timeframe.  I knew I wouldn't sleep anymore, but I was stubborn and wouldn't compromise the sleep time even if I wasn't using it for the intended purpose.  But I was.  Sleeping.  Sleeping and dreaming of not sleeping and wishing I was sleeping.      Sleep deprivatio...

     The smell of old canvas in my car was comforting in the last few work days of the week.  I started packing on Wednesday for the trip I planned to make on the weekend.  It wouldn't be far, just a few miles from home, and it wouldn't be long, only a single night, but I would be ready.  This was to be my first solo camping trip in about a year.  Various health issues and scheduling conflicts had kept me from the experience, and now that I was feeling mostly better and could stake out a Saturday, I was eager to go.  Eager and a little nervous.  The past year has been busy pointing out that I'm older and less invincible than I used to be.  Could my skills have deteriorated while I waited to be strong again?  Those same health issues had impacted my daily walking routine and kept me from taking the longer weekend hikes I liked as well.  I could see the difference in my leg muscles.      Then there's the matter ...

There are fluid properties to free time, whether vacations or their lesser cousins, weekends. You would think it would stay put in its own neat little pile. Here is the time that's mine, you could say. I've carved this piece from the block I share with the world, and it's my time to relax and be free to do what I want to do. It would seem to be the definition: Free Time. But instead, it seeps out of the corral you've designed. It leaks or ebbs from where you had intended to keep it, and you end up filling that free time with responsibilities and mundane tasks rather than the things you say you'd do if only you had the free time. This is my twentieth year at my workplace, so I've been allotted more vacation time than ever before. It's so much that I had to plot most of the days at the start of the year, spread out across every month, just so I won't run the risk of realizing I have a whole pile left at the end of the year. Theoretically, ...

This week has been a harrowing whirlpool of worries and obligations. My first week back at work after a few days vacation is always high stress. I steel myself for the pressure and pace of trying to catch up and untangle the knots that inevitably occur in my absence. Nothing attracts a complicated problem or a string of phone messages and e-mails like stepping away from your desk for a while. At the start of this first week back, I experienced a car accident that left me without a vehicle, scrambling to arrange transportation, to report the accident to the state and make the insurance claim. There have been calls to and from several insurance offices and the body shop, appointments rescheduled, and all of the other accident fallout. Concurrently, there were worries over my mother-in-law's heart surgery, my husband's health problems that required two doctor visits in one week, and impending computer "upgrades" at work that promised to be increasingly complicated...