My daughter pisses me off sometimes. She’s six weeks old.
She wakes up at the worst times of night – when I’m in a deep sleep. She starts crying in the morning right as I sit down to type and try to make a dent in the universe that day.
I feel like her being born has contributed to me being thrown off of my game and being a shittier writer.
My girlfriend does an amazing job taking care of her. She wakes up every two hours to breast feed her. She watches her all day. She loves her like I can’t.
But some days I wish they would just both go away so I can get things done. I love her to death. I love both of them to death. It’s just hard.
Balancing following your dream with your family responsibilities isn’t easy. When you have other obligations it’s easy to make excuses.
I woke up five times in the middle of the night last night so I can’t think clearly when I try to write in the morning.
If only I had more alone time to get work done.
I could go on forever. But at the end of the day you have to play with the cards you’re dealt.
So what do you do to make time for your dreams when it seems like there isn’t any?
You work in the cracks and crevasses.
Stephen King wrote on his lunch breaks when he had a day job. John Grisham worked 70 hours per week as a lawyer and still fit in time to write. Whatever it takes.
I’m sleep deprived and lately it seems like nothing I write is good, but I write my way through it. Hopefully it will be good again. I don’t know.
There’s one thing I do know – there’s always enough time. 168 hours in a week. 40 to work. 56 to sleep (actually, if you have a newborn this isn’t accurate).
That leaves 72 – about 10 hours per day. If you give yourself 3 per day your family and friends get 50, or you can split it in half and keep 36 for your work and 36 for your friends and family.
Either way there’s time.
I wake up early on Saturday and Sunday to work. My girlfriend is great about leaving me alone to work – unless my daughter throws up on her and I need to run and get her a rag to wipe it off.
There’s never uninterrupted zen writing time when you have a kid.
But there’s time and there’s space. If you spread the time out and give yourself space to breathe along the way you’ll get there. “Successful,” people chip away at their goals and dreams.
My girlfriend told me she’d rather me work a little bit less, spend more time with them, and wait a little bit longer to succeed. That’s a wise thing to say.
People I consider failures either never get started or burn out and quit. If you find a dream worth following chase it slowly and pivot when necessary. But always make time.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told you my bundle of joy can sometimes be my bundle of anxiety – but it’s the truth. Maybe it will help you understand that I understand you.
You don’t have unlimited free time to fuck around and work on your dreams. You have responsibilities – kids, a mortgage, debt (!), ect.
Maybe it will help motivate you to know that others have succeeded from your position.
Time management doesn’t work. You can’t manage time. You can manage yourself and your priorities. You can manage your mindset. You can manage to keep pursuing even though you don’t believe in yourself.
I think that’s the only thing that separates the “successful,” from the “unsuccessful.” How they manage themselves.
Maybe this entire post wasn’t good, but hopefully it gave someone reading this permission to keep working even though they have no time.
When my daughter smiles at me it makes everything better. When she grows up and reads everything I write hopefully she’ll be proud of me.