taking my time

When the pandemic started, I thought I would finally have time to do all the things that constant travel had prevented me from doing. But these days, I find I often feel like there simply isn’t enough time. Right now I am writing a poem, revising the finished poems in American Phoenix, preparing a new picture book for self-publication, revising an essay that’s due tomorrow, researching Amish farms and Black supernaturalism, and trying to finish at least one chapter of my novel. I can’t do it all. On top of that, I found out last week that even though the USCIS website says my citizenship application will be processed by October, the Philly office has only just started processing applications from 2017. Which means I had to immediately pay another $540 to renew my green card, and I can’t move forward with my mortgage application until the new card arrives. Which, according to the website, could take up to 10 months. So on that front, the universe is definitely forcing me to slow down. And this week I won’t have time to sit and write because I have a phone conference with an editor tomorrow morning and I’m teaching an online class in the afternoon; the next day I have another live interview for a Toronto morning show called CityLine, and my second poetry class meets that afternoon. The next day I have a meeting to solve a Canadian library’s tech trouble before I’m interviewed by a professor in Texas about radical children’s publishing. The rest of the week is open but I’ve got friends who want to catch up via Zoom and colleagues hoping to talk about shifting fall in-person presentations to an online format. I keep finding requests in my spam folder…folks want videos and poems and blog posts. I can’t do it all. I WON’T do it all. I’m trying to slow down without stopping entirely, which is what I want to do some days. I should have gone for a run this morning, but I didn’t. I didn’t do my usual stretches last night. These are the things that help me feel strong in my body so I know that they’re important. I don’t really miss having a hectic travel schedule but I do miss variety. Yet when I was flying from place to place, I missed having a regular routine and now my daily routine is wearing me down. Still striving to find the right balance! It takes more than time. I need to focus on my priorities because everything doesn’t have equal value. I’ve been doing a *lot* of free gigs and that needs to stop. At least for a while. We’re halfway through July and I have another novel due at the end of August. We’ve got interest from a couple more film studios but at least I can let my film agent handle that. A small publisher reached out after hearing on Twitter that I might have to self-publish the rest of the dragon series, but I’m letting my agent handle that. A PLACE INSIDE OF ME comes out next week and we’ve only had one review in The Globe & Mail, a Canadian newspaper. I’m not dreaming up an innovative way to do a pandemic book launch. I’m proud of that book but I’m going to trust that the folks who are looking will find it in time. The essay that’s due tomorrow is about the twenty-year process of bringing that book into the world. I was angry when I wrote the first draft in December but revised it into something less scathing back in March and now I’m revising it AGAIN in July. For a magazine that won’t be published till the fall…sigh. Today should be a day of rest but instead I’m going to make a mini To Do list and see if I can do just three things that will make me feel strong, safe, and satisfied.