One Little Elephant

I write on a timer - 15 minutes at my desk, 15 doing housework - and currently my most productive hours are 7am to noon. That adds up to 2.5 precious writing hours. I'm not useless in the afternoons, but I'm not as productive. So why do I regularly allow my morning writing time to evaporate while doing tasks that could be done at other times?

Today I spent 4 hours of prime writing time getting Number One Son's scholarship paperwork trundling through three different institutional offices. Mission accomplished. He'll have the money to continue school in the fall. That's wonderful. But I didn't get any writing done today. And that's not. I could have done the same scholarship research, sent the same emails, made the same phone calls, sat on endless hold multiple times, and done paperwork just as effectively in the afternoon. But I didn't.

So why didn't I? Am I really serious about writing? Do I feel that I must earn my writing time by making sure everyone else is taken care of first before I "indulge"? What is it that keeps me from maintaining a protected time and space for writing?

I need to do some hard thinking on this. Perhaps by answering those questions, I can overcome this odd writing sabotage I commit against myself on too regular a basis.

Something that's helping me write today: the truth that the sun doesn't need to be rising in the east to start a day, or at least to start a day over.