How do you find a balance between work-work and your life’s work? My scale is always weighed down on one side or the other. Occasionally both. The last few weeks have been crazy hectic because it’s been thesis crunch time, and now graduation, which means readings and book parties and last hurrahs.
So naturally, this is when a new project lands in my lap, I get offered a summer gig and I’m trying to keep up with my regular workload, to boot. Sadly, I don’t have the luxury of letting work slack in order to focus on my personal goals. But I’m trying to get energized to balance everything in a more efficient way.
Many writers just try to squeeze more hours out of a busy day — they get up earlier and stay up later. Or they bail on having any kind of social life. But for me, one of the best parts of graduate school has been the social aspect of it — we’ve built and nurtured a close-knit community, one so rare that I frequently hear other people comment on it. I’m proud of that. Not every MFA program creates that. Heck, even within the New School, not every department in the writing program has managed that. So that’s one thing I really don’t want to skip out on — and I have a super-understanding writer-husband who gets what that’s all about and pushes me toward embracing it, even when I have too much going on, even when it sometimes means missing out on time with him and the baby, as it did tonight.
But I want him to know how much I appreciate it — I truly do. And so do my classmates, who really dug the awesome chocolate-white chocolate-butterscotch chip cookies he made for tonight’s practice run. I hope I’ll be able to craft some fun treats for his classmates when it’s his turn at the CUNY Writers Institute this fall! Yay!
