Forgive yourself
I should write more. I should read more. I should clean the kitchen.
There are too many things in my head on any given day. Above my head there is a corkboard with notes, white squares of paper with tasks written on them. Some are urgent — paid work for clients that must be delivered within deadlines.
Others are for me. There’s one saying I need to write an article for Medium. I’ve gotten as far as outlining the piece but it’s sitting on my drive, and the note is sitting on my corkboard, watching successive generations of other notes come and go.
There is no time for me. There is only time for everything else, everyone else.
I try to meditate. The books say you should meditate. The success gurus on here all meditate for an hour before slamming a wheatgrass juice and blasting a high-intensity workout. What do they meditate on? Their goals, they say.
The Buddha teaches us to meditate on nothing. Or on everything equally. But when I focus on everything, it feels like nothing.
I have to clean my kitchen. I’ve got three clients waiting for work. My family need my services. I’m trying to finish this god damn remote learning English degree I started in the last days of the Bush presidency. Everyone is remote learning now. Everyone is remote, and so busy. I can’t complain.
I feel good when I meditate. I can let go. Breathe. I try to get as close to silence as possible but the cars are rumbling about twenty yards away, even if I find a moment when this house is quiet.
Of course, the problem is trying to find a time to meditate. I should put it on the board.
TO DO: Become one with the universe. Due Friday.
When I bought that thing, I sat in a bar with a friend and said, “I’m really expecting that board to do some seriously heavy lifting.” I hope it will make sense of the chaos, I meant. Everything was so chaotic back then.
It did, a little. Things became a little less chaotic when I stopped drinking. Even now, all the board does is make the chaos manageable. Without the board, the chaos would flood me. Burst my banks. The board is the way I sandbag my time.
I’m scared of returning to the time of chaos. It is my biggest fear.
I hate when I can’t keep on top of my time. I hate when I can’t do the things that I need to do for myself. When all of my time goes to others. I hate myself for not making more time.
I close my eyes and breathe and say, forgive yourself. You are trying your best. It’s okay not to work on personal writing samples. You’re finishing a degree, on top of everything else. When you’re finished the degree, you can move your attention to something else.
I feel okay for twenty seconds and then I read a Medium piece about how anyone can make a fortune writing erotica. I should write a book, I think. And I pin a note to my board that says:
Book?
With a hopeful question mark. It will sit there, a silent observer to the more pressing chores that pass by.
