Living at the Speed of Trees: This Writer's Life

• Andi


• 6 Apr 2011

There’s an orange polka dotted couch across from me. A group of great ladies sit in a circle trading stories to my right, and Joe is behind the counter. I have my Mac on my lap, Brett Ryan Stewart in my ears, coffee and biscotti at my fingers. My head is bopping. I am happy.

The life of a writer.

Someone asked me last night, “Do you have that atypical schedule artists dream of, the one that is creativity driven and there is no clocking in or out?” Yep, I do.

Today, I spent a little time getting some business done. Then I headed out into the sun that has goldened our budding trees. I wandered through the library stacks with the time to just see if I could remember what I had said I wanted to read recently. (I found N. Scott Momaday’s Ancient Child that I’m reading for CB’s The Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge). Now, I’m at Cuppa Joe, our one and only local coffee shop. I’ll probably hang here for the afternoon and get some writing done before I head over to church to help Beth with the Wednesday night dinner. But then again, I might not . . . I have that luxury.

I don’t buy into the “I don’t have enough time to write” excuse; I wrote a lot (more than I do now, in fact) when I worked over 60 hours a week as a professor. Yet, there is nothing like having the time to wander through my day with the freedom to move and read and think and write as I am inclined. On days when I let myself slide into this life – when I’m not kicking and screaming against it because I think I should be “doing more” – I feel most like myself and, therefore, most like a writer.

The space of an open day where I don’t have deadlines to meet, meetings to loathe, and more work than I can possibly do well – that is a blessing I don’t take for granted. It feels like I’m standing in a wide open field where the most gorgeous wildflowers are blooming one by one around me at a speed I can see – magenta poppies widen, sweet peas uncurl their pink pockets of blossom, cornflowers spit out their spikes. I have the time and space to see all of these things that feed my soul. It’s like life is moving at “the speed of trees” to quote Ellis Paul.

That’s not to say that a writer need have the freedom of schedule that I do – not at all. A writer is a person who writes. Period.

But this writer – this girl with the laptop and half a cup of dark, fresh roasted coffee – lives herself more in this space where she can wander, breath and watch the flowers bloom.