I’m supposed to be writing. It’s my job. I made a new plan to provide structure to this writing business:
New Working Schedule to Be Followed Monday-Friday
7:00 a.m.: WAKE UP! Stretch/ Feel inspired/ Follow “The Artist’s Way”/ Coffee
8:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Write! (NO distractions)
12:00–1:00 p.m.: Walk as far as possible but do not run away. Prepare lunch.
1:00–4:00 p.m.: Eat lunch at desk/ Review morning’s work/ More writing.
It’s now 1:00 on the dot and I am at my desk! Schedule met! (Although I didn’t write a word from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.)
That’s not exactly true. I sent little hearts and smiley faces to my daughter and cooed in my messages, “I miss you. Do you still love me?” I texted my son and told him, No, I can’t buy him a car. I wrote some hate mail to a few exes to get all worked up.
So, I looked at the sandwich and the blank screen. Hmmm. Perhaps I ought to go out to lunch like all those famous writers like Hemingway used to do in France. It would be a noble thing to do—bring a pad of paper, observe the surroundings, and write something very clever. I mean, who can finish a sentence in this house? Two Jack Russells and a hyperactive mother. It’s insane! I do live in a separate apartment over the garage, but it’s messy and that’s confusing. I should clean it all up first, but this could take months.
Now, it’s panic time. How can anyone write when anxious? I am supposed to shut off my phone and have no distractions like a TV or radio and all this is making me more anxious. My mother goes ballistic when I turn off the phone. She takes it personally, as if SHE is the only person in my life. I get other phone calls! There is this collector guy about some debt and he calls me every day!
So, I want to turn the phone on. Writing is isolating enough. I should change vocations and get a job. I couldn’t be unemployable. Could I?
I was thinking about all this when I heard the “thump thump” up the stairs. Oh no,
“Knock knock! It’s your mother.” Really? I thought it was that hot guy I haven’t met yet who comes to visit on afternoons.
“WHAT?” I answered, with the tone of an artist harried and absorbed, because I very well could have been in the middle of a brilliant train of thought with hands gliding across the computer as if they were doing it themselves, you know, like geniuses always say. “I just got out of the way. It was God’s work.”
“Why aren’t you answering the phone?” Mom asked, ready to open the door as I raced to the door to beat her, flew it opened and blocked her from entering.
“I’m working! I told you …”
“I smell cigarettes.” Mom was trying to peer around me and I was trying to block her without knocking her down the flight of stairs.
“Is that whole pile of clothes laundry?”
Go away. “Mother, what is it?”
She looked puzzled. Maybe, after summoning the courage to cross the lawn and climb up the stairs to my apartment, knowing she was breaking the only rule between us (Don’t come up to my apartment—it is the last semblance of privacy I have left in life) she had forgotten why she came. Maybe, she was just lonely.
She sighed. “Never mind, it can wait.” She started to turn around.
“Mom, come on, don’t be mad! Pretend I go to the office. It wouldn’t mean I didn’t love you.”
I thought she went a little over the top hobbling down each step one leg then the next, clutching the rail. At the bottom she mumbles, “I was just wondering if you needed anything, that’s all.”
