A work-life balance, also trees

Authors are human, and most of us are barely chipping away at things. I know that’s what it has felt like for me for a long time – that no matter how fast I write, I can’t write fast enough.

Last week, I took the week off of the dayjob and off of writing. It’s the first time I’ve had a full vacation for…..you know, I really don’t know the last time I wasn’t doing one of those things. In April, I went on “vacation” but that meant flying across the country for a writing workshop. In November, once more, “vacation” meant flying myself to Texas for a conference. There were some delightful moments and experiences packed in there, but none of those substitute for rest.

And rest is definitely something we need. Without it, we start losing focus.

Ironically, I’m not good at resting. Even though I didn’t have any writing or working planned, I still spent a good chunk of my week off doing chores. When we bought the house last September – another vacation that doesn’t quite count, where I took three days off of the dayjob to paint walls and move – the lot featured large swathes of invasive volunteer trees. They were quick-growing elms that have come over from China or somewhere. The trees are beautiful when they get big, but boy do they get big. The biggest one I’ve seen was at least 50 feet tall – a large canopy tree for sure. It took several days for our neighbors to have that one taken out after a storm split it down the middle, luckily missing their house.

So these are not the trees we wanted growing in the yard, obviously. Don’t get me wrong, I love trees. But most of our backyard is already taken up with a large, established maple, an ailing scarlet oak, and a lovely black walnut. There is no room for invasive elms in that picture.

While there are still a few volunteers that were too big for me to take out with the tools I had, I’m happy to say I have mostly cleared the small forest that had popped up. You may be surprised to hear that I’m happy about that. I did mourn the trees, who were doing the best they could. But I have plans. Specifically, plans for shorter bushes and medium sized trees that can produce buckets of delicious fruit. I’ve already procured elderberry and haskap starters. My goal was to plant those last week, but unfortunately the only things I got into the ground were two dwarf peach trees. I’m hopeful they survive the winter.

As you can see, I’m not good at resting. But sometimes rest just looks like doing something different – changing things up. For the first time in a long time, I got a lovely idea for a story last week and felt excited. So I must have done something right. I scribbled down the outlines of that story in a notebook and spent most of a day tasting it on my tongue. Then I went back to digging.

There’s never enough time to write all the stories. There’s never enough time to rest, either. Sometimes, you have to simply decide to make the time you need.

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