Life
As some of you may already know, my third son, Malachi, was born this month. Needless to say that this had thrown everything on its head as far as daily routine and expectations of writing progress. I will say, however, that the delivery and subsequent recovery is going much more smoothly for my wife and newborn (and by extension, myself) than it did with our other two children. Case in point, I had the energy to write this post only two days late!
As with all major life transitions, I expect there will be a period of relative chaos as we figure out the new normal, and with a newborn, several similar transitions will occur over the coming months. That said, I am feeling relatively up-beat about the prospect of sneaking in time to write here and there, especially during unavoidable downtimes such as while on the train ride home.
Speaking of train rides home, the new semester of school has started for me. I’m taking more classes this semester, but already I am getting into the flow of them and am really excited about the content being covered. Today was my first day back to school after the birth of Malachi, and having spent a portion of the last couple days catching up, I feel like I haven’t lost any major ground in keeping up with these classes (something that I was quite worried about knowing he’d be born during the semester).
Writing
A combination of things lead to a distinctly sub-optimal writing turnout this month. After the traumatic birth and early life experiences with my first two children, both my wife and I approached the prospect of Malachi’s birth with a heavy dose of anxiety, despite being so excited to meet him. My coping strategy for this was to turn to video games (as I am known to do) and so I spent a lot more time there than I usually do. Between these two things and the start of the new semester, I managed to get very little done by way of writing. The novella that I wanted to finish before his birth remains around 60% completed, but at this point I haven’t touched it in a couple weeks—a span of time that I would usually consider impossible to go without writing something.
That said, things aren’t all bad. Now that the anxiety of the unknown has, for the most part, passed, we are ready to buckle down for the first few months of the baby’s life. Since we’ve done this twice before, this part doesn’t seem nearly as scary. In other words, my spark has returned to me. I’m getting excited about writing, thinking about it when my mind wanders again where only a week ago it wouldn’t have ventured anywhere close. So who knows? Maybe February will have some writing in store after all. I’m still not sure if the novella is the best target for what time and brainpower I’m able to muster, but whatever it is, I’ll be sure to let you all know next month.
Sorry this one was a bit more rambling than usual (who knew that was possible?). As always, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next month.
Sincerely,
L.A. Morton-Yates