I'm giving 100%... somewhere

I’ve been procrastinating on a writing residency application for the last few weeks, or is it months (or is it days)? This has totally snuck up on me even though I knew it was coming. Over the winter, I went down an aspiration-and-caffeine-induced residency research rabbit hole. I was fresh off my new years resolutions of writing more and getting serious about my underlying crazy, and by the time I found this place (pristine, out in nature, costing less than my left kidney) the deadline for applications had closed and the next application period seemed so far away!

Well, guess what? A nagging voice in my brain this week suddenly piped up, hey! You oughta check when the new application deadline is for that residency you’ve been dreaming about!

And when I finally looked it up I discovered that it’s two weeks away. TWO WEEKS! I do not have time to drop everything for two weeks and convince these people—in the form of writing proposals and summaries and all the rest of it—that I am deserving. Eid is in ten days. I have one kid who’s about to endure his first-ever final exam period and another whose soccer schedule is an exercise in endurance for the parents who have downloaded yet another new app with constantly changing practice times and locations and uniform pick ups and tournament sign ups etc etc etc. Look at me psyching myself out before I even try rather than trying and failing like an honest person would do!

I have an excellent list of valid excuses not to dedicate more time to my writing but I am not mean enough to bore you with said list. I also have that same nagging voice reminding me that there is never a good time and that anyone who goes to this thing will also have a million reasons not to have gone, only they’ll have ignored all those reason and put the writing at the top of their list and oh my God, is it really that simple?? Do I just need a few nights of caffeine fueled laptop time to get through this application? Is this a throwback to my student days?

Or! Or! Am I oversimplifying? Am I minimizing every other responsibility and role in my life? I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a wife, I’m a human-being who works 40 hours a week at an office job and comes home beat most days before figuring out dinner and carpool and laundry. Years ago, when I was feeling guilty about some thing or another, my younger sister Soraya pointed out a fact that’s stayed with me ever since: when you have 100% to give, that’s 100% to be split across every facet of your life. Prayer. Relationships. Exercise. Work. Dentist appointments. When you’re giving 15% in one area and feeling guilty that you can’t give 100%, you have to remember that 100% is your total. For everything.

So do I have 15% to put to residency prep for a week or two? Honestly I don’t know. But at a minimum, I’m gonna have to try.

Imagine living here for two weeks and writing. Photo by Suelee Wright on Unsplash

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Do I go for it? What are you obsessed with that takes up the free time you don’t have and keeps you up at night?