Welcome back to the June Edition of the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. This month’s topic is cause for some chuckling to myself.  Balancing writing with life.  Generally, I believe I do that poorly.   I could easily say I have trouble balancing my writing with my husband’s expectations for my time, but that would be a cop-out.  It’s always easier to blame someone or something else for my own shortcomings, but it’s not helpful.

My husband is very supportive of my writing — as long as that’s what I’m doing.  If I’m sitting at the computer endlessly checking Facebook and Twitter updates, he has no patience for that.  Timing is also a factor.  For him, daylight hours are time to work.  Usually outside.  And when he’s working outside, he likes me to be available to assist him.  I’ve been retired for four years, and we’re still working this out.  The mind reading thing on either side of our relationship just isn’t working the way we’d like it to work.  So, we frequently have unmet expectations that have not been effectively communicated.  Sometimes, my husband will communicate something he wants me to help him with the next day but overnight, something intervened to change the plans, and I didn’t get the memo.  Or he was waiting for me to tell him I was was ready to help.  But I was waiting for him to tell me he was ready to start.  I imagine I’m not the only one to find myself in that situation.

Writing time works similarly.  I’ll have the project ready.  It’s waiting for me to start, but I procrastinate a little.  One day becomes two which becomes three which becomes a week, and so on.  Eventually, it’s been a month, and oh, my goodness, I have to get back to that.  Not very professional, is it?

The short answer is: I don’t have a good writing-to-life balance at this moment.