Start now. Start by giving yourself a minute. You might do nothing. That’s fine. It’s your minute, and it’s only a minute. Then the minute is up and the bus is here. You might need to start practicing these new intentions again later. More than once. Many times. Learning to protect your time is hard.
Start where you are. This might be mid-scroll, index finger arched à la ET or The Creation of Adam. You might think of art, creation, life. Or you might think of the empty notebook on your bedside table, and of Spielberg and Michelangelo, who probably didn’t have addictive algorithms, or your job, or your adorable toddler, or your aging parent, or the hours on the phone you spend with health insurance. You stop yourself from looking them up and focus instead on strangers arguing on the internet, reposted by another stranger with that quote by Mary Oliver, the one about your one wild and precious life. You want to start now. But don’t. It’s late. Get some sleep. Start tomorrow.
It’s tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Start now. Start by not beating yourself up for not starting earlier. Beating yourself up is a waste of time and will not help. Remember that.
Instead start with the big picture: Who and what do you love? What do you live for? Make a list. These things are the most important. They are your priority. Circle and highlight “writing.” Stick the note by your desk.
Or start with what you have to do to keep yourself and your loved ones alive and well: bills paid, bellies filled, diapers changed. These things are most important. Decide from now on you won’t listen to advice from people who act as if these categories of obligations—(A) things you live for, and (B) things you must do to live—don’t exist. They do. They both take time.
In listing your most important priorities, include rest, health, community. On the latter: Spend time awkwardly introducing yourself, laughing, having lunch with someone. Help people. Say yes, say yes a bunch. But at some point, you will also have to say no. Do so without guilt.
You might try to reallocate time from category B to category A: If you can, block time for writing (first thing, before e-mails, or a few hours on the weekend, whatever you can get). If you can, hide in a room or closet and leave your phone outside. Or find a relatively hidden bench in the park. If you can, make this regular. If you can, become less precious about where and when you write: Write in the car at pickup time, in the bus or subway, at the DMV. If you can, share your burdens, hire or enlist help, delegate, foster independence in your loved ones. If you can, go away to a writing residency. Go on a train ride across the country, sail away for a long trip on a ship. Or if you must, just jot down phrases in that little notebook between glances at the sandbox in the playground, or while waiting in line at the post office. Do what you can. That’s all you can ever do.
Identify a category C: Things you do that are neither loved nor needed. That might include most of your social media use. Fight the algorithm. Use app blockers, lock up your phone, turn your screen black and white. You will fail often. Remember, corporations have spent millions over decades to keep you in there. Do your best. Refer again to the note above about beating yourself up.
Be moved by a boy playing the violin on the street. Venmo him. Notice the first green of spring. Notice birdsong. Delight in the short legs of a little dog passing by, seemingly a cross between a corgi and a poodle. Come up with words like porgie and coodle. Help a lady bring a stroller down the stairs on the subway. This is good use of your time.
Allow yourself time to grieve the horrors of the world. To sit and cry or do something about it. But, if you can, avoid letting the algorithm dictate or exploit this.
Look up at your note with writing highlighted and circled. Remind yourself of the big picture, cultivate joy and wonder in your work. Compliment yourself on a beautiful sentence, celebrate milestones, celebrate time spent writing, words and pages. Find fun. Fun helps you fight the algorithms and everything in category C. Fun will probably improve your writing, too.
Have a busy week. Now that you have fostered independence in your children and they get themselves ready and make their own sandwiches, watch them drop an open jar of mayonnaise on the floor. A pipe bursts upstairs. Your colleague quits and your boss assigns you all their work. You need to go to the dentist. Your dog needs to go to the vet. You forget all about your little categories. You forget your lunch on the kitchen counter.
Days go by. And weeks. You lose track.
On a Saturday afternoon, you see your little notebook on the bedside table. You open it. You managed to trickle your words in, and there are only a couple of blank lines. You think of the Colorado River slowly carving the Grand Canyon. You think of time as a dimension. You try to picture your tiny slice of the tesseract of space-time. You write down the phrase you had thought about minutes earlier, filling the old notebook. You tell yourself you did good and get up, reach for the new notebook on the top of your bookshelf. You open it. You start now.
Ananda Lima is the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor, 2024) and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), winner of the Hudson Prize. She is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Thumbnail credit: Beowulf Sheehan