Creatively juicy

(A note about NaBloPoMo and yesterday’s no post: I’m in a hotel with flooky Internet access. I did write a post but was unable to publish before midnight. And I’m in Central time, too, which means I had an extra hour. But the good folks who configure the wireless access for the Comfort Suites chain of hotels were determined to break what would have been a five-day posting streak. It sure doesn’t take much to knock me off my schedule, do it? And the post? I’m saving it for a future NBPM emergency.)

I’m out of town doing research for my freelance project and I feel conflicted.

I was conflicted before I left, trying to pack me and Tink, in the process doing laundry to provide stuff to be packed, to make sure C had something in the fridge to come home to, wondering what else I was forgetting, and then thinking about the seven-hour drive ahead of me, wondering how Tink would cope with that, and starting to feel slightly anxious about the project itself, its progress, the looming deadline.

Somehow everything got done, the car was packed and we headed on our way.

The drive was smooth, and even seemed to take less time than the same trip a month ago. Gas is far cheaper than it was back in late September, and we managed to find much better restaurants both on the road and once we arrived. (Oh, the food last time. I’ll say this: I have seen Hell. And it smells like a Chili’s.)

Then I woke up this morning, conducted two interviews and spent the afternoon working on an outline and scribbling a few graphs as well as ideas for kicky sidebars. I felt awesome.

There is something about the excitement and satisfaction found in your grown-up work – either the work you do that you love, the work you hope to do some day, or the work you (mostly gladly) left behind to put someone else’s needs first. It’s like a first love. You’ll never fully get over it, and it only takes a brush with it to reignite the flames.

I felt effective – something that is rare for me, because the act of raising a 3-year-old hardly ever feels effective; you don’t see fruits of your labor every day. Unless you happen to have a 3-year-old who eats with a napkin on her lap, asks to have things passed instead of sticking her hand in your soup, wipes her own mouth and says, “Excellent dinner tonight, Mom. I’d love to have this again soon.” And also because I have NO power or authority to fix the business and my lack of influence there is so frustrating it’s “Twilight Zone”-esque, you know, I’m screaming and screaming and no one can hear me. I’m like most moms I know in that I can’t say, on a regular basis, that I’m good at this parenting things. It’s nice to be able to say, “I feed my child healthy food, he or she wears clean clothes, and I provide access to lots of print material and educational opportunities,” but that isn’t evidence that one is raising a good human being. (”My child is happy,” is no proof you’re doing a good job, either. The children who eat hot dogs, chicken nuggets and undiluted juice every day while watching “SpongeBob”? They’re ecstatic.)

(And, really, that’s OK. I don’t rail on and on about how parenting is particularly burdensome because you don’t get quarterly progress reports on how you’re doing, how the only way to really know how you’re doing is when your child leaves a difficult phase and only then through hindsight can you see what you did wrong. But I won’t say instant gratification isn’t nice.)

So I had a great day, being the professional writer again, walking from appointment to appointment in the autumn sunshine, when I thought of C. And how his day was likely going. And I felt torn and guilty and embarrassed. Guilty that I was enjoying doing what love to do when what he loves to do has become a wretched nightmare. Torn between immersing myself in the project because my employer deserves a fantastic product and worrying about what was going on at home. And embarrassed to be enjoying myself so much, because a steaming heap of crap is still there and all the Mary Tyler Moore-like hat-tossing journalistic escapism isn’t going to change that, you fool.

Still, it was exhilarating to feel the creative life force within me again. Maybe I just need to experience it more so it’s not such a foreign sensation.

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