Don't Give Up on Me

I made a commitment to daily writing.

Image created via Midjourney

A few months ago, my husband and I began a nightly ritual. He set an alarm on his phone for 8:00 pm. At that time, he would find me in the house, wherever I was, and ask if I had done any writing that day. It could be any type of writing — something formal for my blog, or an informal quick capture of my thoughts in my journal — but the intent was to hold me accountable to a commitment I had made to myself.

Last night he asked, “Can I turn off that alarm on my phone for 8:00 pm every day?”

I asked him why he would want to do that.

He shrugged and replied, “Well most days the answer is no, so I figure writing must not be that important to you.”

I was pretty hurt by that comment.

I told him that I am trying so hard to figure out how to fit writing into my day. Between three active kids, a full-time job, taking care of myself in other ways like yoga, and the desire for sleep, finding a consistent time has been tricky. But I keep trying, and eventually, the groove will become so well-worn that it is a natural part of my day.

The Daylight Savings Time change really threw me for a loop a few weeks ago. My body had settled into a rhythm of waking around 5:30 am every day. I savored the quiet of the house. And even if the toddler woke shortly after 6:00 am, I could usually still sit at the kitchen table with my Surface while she ate breakfast, tuning out her babbles to herself. Somehow, that one-hour change completely messed me up. My body would wake at the time that it thought was 5:30 am, but instead it was 6:30 — costing me my precious morning hour. And I hate alarm clocks and won’t use them (unless I need to be somewhere like an airport).

But I have been steadily inching back toward the 5:30 wakeup time. I also found that I crave hot liquids in the morning. Because I have always been a one-to-two-cups-of-coffee-per-day person, more than that makes me jittery. So instead, I fill two cups in the morning. One is my coffee with straight heavy cream, the way I like to drink it. The other is a cup of hot water with honey and lemon. The hot water sits and cools while I drink the coffee and by the time I am finished with that cup, I am ready for the second cup and the liquid is temperate.

As I have slowly been waking earlier and earlier each day, I gather the materials that I believe will make the most of that time to myself: my journal, a book of something that I can read in a start-and-stop fashion, like poetry (currently Daily Rituals by Mason Currey), and my Surface.

While I drink my coffee, I write in my journal, bullet-fashion, capturing the previous day’s activities. I read a few pages of the book, usually no more than five minutes. And then I write something.

Occasionally, this ritual fails. Kids wake up earlier or I sleep later than I had planned. Or I become distracted by something else and before I know it, my time is gone. I’m working on that.

Going back to my husband’s comment that he wanted to stop asking me about my daily writing, I said:

Please don't give up on me. I will get there.

I told him that asking me every day shows me that he cares that I work on my writing. That he knows that it is important to me, and that he will continue to encourage and support me.

It was 8:45 pm last night, but I sent him a text message. He was working in his office so I didn’t want to barge in. I had set a timer, found myself a prompt on the NaNoWriMo Word Sprints Twitter handle, and wrote for five minutes, by hand, in a notebook.

My text to my husband read: “I finished my writing today.”

You can support my work as a writer by buying me a coffee.