It has been clear to me for some time now that I won’t live long enough to finish all the books I’m writing in my head. A good number of them have a head start on my hard disc, but as Morpheus says, “Time is always against us.” The largest culprit in the 9-2-5 job. Eight hours is a huge amount of time to devote each day, no matter how you slice it. Since eight hours are required for sleep, or trying to sleep, that means work is half of each day’s waking hours. The other half includes things like making meals, washing clothes, family time, paying bills, running the vacuum, exercising because you sit in front of a screen all day, and, of course, yard work. Plants don’t have the same constraints that humans do and can get to the business of growing larger 24/7, as long as the weather cooperates.
Some days I grow reflective about this. My daughter often asks why I don’t draw or paint more. I love doing both. The answer is time. Even weekends are eaten up with shopping for the food you need to get through the week, and yes, the yard was bigger than I realized, and the house needed more repair work than anticipated. You see, writing well requires a lot of practice. And even more reading. Any successful writer (which I am not yet) will tell you that reading is essential. I do read a lot. A friend recently sent me an article about a writer whose heirs calculated he’d read at least 4,000 books. I know that I’ve read about 1,200 since 2013. I also know that I can’t count them all before that time. I went through our living room shelves and counted 500 I’d read there, and that’s only one room.
Ironically, as a professor reading time is limited. Unless you have a research only post. I read a lot as a kid and a ton as a student. When I started teaching I had less time, except on semester breaks and I tried to read as many books as possible during those interludes. Then the 9-2-5 began. My current pace of reading began when trying to live as an adjunct between Rutgers and Montclair State. Montclair was a 70-mile drive, so between classes I started reading voraciously. Ironically, the commute to my 9-2-5 spurred me to start writing books again. By then I was practically fifty. Since my nonfiction books take about five years to write, well, the math’s not in my favor. Time to stop my musing, because the 9-2-5 begins shortly.