Beginning.....yet again.

I think I better start writing again. Just begin.

In one respect I know this has to do with September. This morning it was actually cool in Arizona. Like, so cool the windows were open, I had my BATHROBE ON, and I wanted a hot latte rather than an iced coffee. So when the little chicas of the household went out for storyhour and preschool I found myself opening the DD (damn dissertation) on my laptop next to an open window.

Wow. Writing next to almost but not quite chilly air. I breathed in. What was that in the air? Not the smell of pumpkins or apple pie. But school. It was there. That unmistakeable scent of information, of schedules, of lectures, notes, books, PAPER. Of course I got excited about my research. It was fall, back to school time! Yeah! Finally. I've missed that. I never have written much in the summer.

I've realized that slowly I had become an addict to this calander. I crave the orders of weeks and weekends. Of the Friday night football game that makes Saturday seem so sweet. Of the cram filled Sunday night that breaks open Monday mornings. The rotation of months into holiday breaks and week long vacations. The endless possibility of a three month summer.

And then I paused and thought about that. I haven't written much this August either....but I don't have time to waste...to be spent waiting for someone to tell me, now, this is the time, now, go write now. Part of trying on this hat of mother/thinker is attempting to find spaces/places in my life where I never thought I could write before. Arizona is a hard place to try on that hat. It's so hot here in August that Fall seems a heavenly miracle I'm too much of a sinner to feel again.

My niece goes to a little preschool nearby. Each morning they say the date, the time, the year, the month. It is all charted on a little box filled calander in the classroom. Countless of other preschoolers do the same thing each morning. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with knowing the date. Here's the thing though, there is something addicting about it. And we are forced to buy the sweet candy pretty early in our lives. This isn't a post about the horrors or the possibilites of year-round schooling and it certainly isn't a tirade against preschool curriculums. But it is admission of addictation. It is a realization that I have learned to only be 'creative' to be 'productive' in the confines of a calander, a chart that tells me when I should be learning, experiencing the new, constructing.....being. Traditons are important, the change of seasons is too. The march of time is something to be recognized, to be celebrated, to be mourned. But it isn't something to become addicted to. It's rock candy -pretty on the outside but ugly and it'll rot your teeth for sure.

So I'm admitting that I didn't write much this past month. (there's been a lot more than heat to think about too) But I'm also a school schedule addict and I'm recovering. I actually have been quite proud of my productivity over the past two summers. I've forced myself to churn out more work in those summers than all my other summers combined. (AHHH to have waste-ful time again). I'm learning to forge a new kind of schedule. One that isn't wedded to the schedules of the school calander. One that is much more based on a "now-grab-this moment" than "yeah, Monday's coming"

We aren't taught how to do this in our schools. We are taught to wait. We are taught to listen to others not our selves. We are taught to pay attention to the date, to the schedule, to the plan. But it isn't always our plan or our schedule. And it's a fine line to walk, this balancing of others time and our own time. It's one we have to learn and unlearn and learn again.