Sandbar

Everything takes a long time. Talk to a productivity expert, who will tell you to double or triple how long you think a task will take, then add a few hours onto that. Talk to any writer, who talks about draft upon draft upon draft. Putting in a full day and having almost nothing at all to show for it. 

I looked at the date of the last entry, and couldn't believe it's been nearly half a year since I posted here.

My friend Amie Reilly posted this a few days ago on her blog, the shape of me, her first post in an entire year. She writes, "I have notes. I have drafts. It didn’t go anywhere." 

I feel that way with so many projects. I have notes. I have drafts. It hasn't gone anywhere. 

Since I met Amie on the first day of grad school four years ago, we've shared the experience of feeling we're on the margins of the scholarly discussions we love because of motherhood, but in the center of everything because of motherhood, too. Our boys are exactly the same age. Amie and her son have a ritual of a beach walk on the evening before the start of the school year. I haven't done this with Wally, but I somehow feel so tied into their ritual, from reading her writing about it, and I'm tied into that exact stretch of sand from wandering it for infinite hours in my own childhood.

I am nearing the end of my one-year experiment over at writingfitness.com. It has changed since the beginning. My partner, Kajal, the yoga teacher, has dropped off writing entries. I've also let the monthly guest-writer post go (although I will have one more from Sharyn) before the last entry September 19.

I am working on writing a new Artist Statement, for various grants, which is an excellent opportunity to stop and think—what am I trying to do? A chance to name a new course, claim your identity, sort through the scattered pieces of your "work" and try to trace a coherent theme, or at least a coherent set of questions.

I've had an idea for this blog, for how I wanted to adapt it, re-purpose some of the material, into something bigger, more meaningful, more lasting. I have notes. I have drafts. It hasn't gone anywhere. But maybe flailing among those notes and drafts are where I need to be for a long time. Why wouldn't that be the case. Swimming too far out. The murky waters of the Gowanus Sessions. That's how it has to be for a long time. It feels amazing to be standing at this precipace, having a child entering the last year of elementary school. But it has taken a long time to get here, much of it documented here, for example, here. 

Things take a long time. The waters stretch out. So often they're cold and the current pulls the wrong way. Every now and then we find a sandbar.