Woke up early to run this morning, and woke up my eldest girl too. She wasn't going for a run. Nope: science project due today, with a few finishing touches to complete: framing text and photos and placing them on her backboard. "Herbal Medicine." She even prepared her own Garlic Tincture for the project. She left for school looking proud and happy and DONE! That is a good feeling.
She didn't get a nap, but I did. Thankfully. Doing dishes at 10 o'clock at night is not conducive to early morning exercise.
I drifted down into sleep thinking about this article that's going around called "Creative People Say No." According to the piece, a signficant proportion of creative people say no to things they consider distractions in order to get their work done. The article irritated me. Why? Do I disagree? Do I just dislike saying no?
I don't disagree, in fact. I know the time it takes to complete a project. The quality of that time matters, too. If you're going deep, you need to sink down slowly, stay under, and not be presumptively yanked out. (Being presumptively yanked out seems the very definition of parenting, frankly.) I fight for my time, and resent when it's taken away. In fact, I probably do say no quite often. When I'm deep inside a project I believe it wise and wholesome and productive to say no to the following major distractions: Facebook, Twitter, email.
But there are many things I cannot say no to.
I can't say no to the dishes, no to the science fair project, no to the sick child, no to the solo parenting weekend due to Kevin's work, no to providing meals and clean clothes, no to walking the dogs, at least not all the time. And there are many things I don't want to say no to, too. I want to see my kids play soccer and swim. I want to help them practice piano. I want to meet friends for lunch and early morning runs. I want to connect and be connected, and therefore I say yes.
Reading that article gave me a sense of panic, I suspect. Given all these things I can't say no to, how can I possibly create? But I do! I do create. There is more than a smack of privilege to this whole "saying no" thing, an assumption that a creative person owes to his or her art an aloof and introverted life.
That actually doesn't work very well for me.
That said ... how different would my life look if I worked in a traditional full-time job, if my office were not in my home? What would I have the privilege of saying no to, under those circumstances? We might have a dishwasher that the kids could load and unload. Kevin might share sick kid duties. Our meals might be less from scratch, or more from the crockpot. Then again, I might not be able to meet friends for lunch quite so easily.
Kevin and I are thinking about these details quite a lot right now, imagining sharing the roles at home and at work more evenly, imagining our lives shifted slightly, again, to accommodate me stepping even more fully into work, and him stepping even more fully into home. I say yes a lot, but I'll tell you, I would happily say no to the dishes.Labels: art, chores, create, Kevin, naps, parenting, work, writing