The Art of Standing Still
Stealing moments in a world that never waits
Everyday feels like a one minute hourglass. I’ve barely drunk my coffee and I need to be out the door to take the kids somewhere. There’s a few lines needed on the last of my poem, but I need to work. How desperately I want to romanticize my life, but when I look out of my window, the view is nothing but a huge brick apartment building right next to me. Brick walls and train tracks. A dog shits on the lawn, the cops bust a drug deal literally in my parking lot. So I found myself creating a world within my bedroom, hanging those stupid little fairy lights in the corner to give it some false sense of ambience.
I have so many interests but can’t niche down to follow just one path. If I did, would I get somewhere faster? Am I going nowhere slower because of how many roads I’m traveling at once? I am so busy with work, I had to decide against taking my second fiction class that I was really looking forward to. Writing is the drink of water in the desert. It’s the time that is just for me. No one else. I feel starved of it. Am I a spoiled brat to be so entitled to think I deserve this? Or has life made me believe that my days should be spent on the things that pull from my spirit? It takes from me. It feels like it’s supposed to.
I fear if I lean on my creativity, I will lose my footing. Maybe I won’t be able to make rent. Maybe I won’t be able to buy my daughter that thing she wants. I won’t be able to pay the electricity or whatever else I feel like my life depends on. The sacrifice of soul to appease the survival feels like a death sentence. A different kind of death. The kind that kills you slowly, and one day you look in the mirror and your hair is gray. And none of your paintings have decorated the walls of an art gallery. All of your poetry is half written in some Barnes & Noble journal in the nightstand. Your inner child has given up tugging at your pant leg, or your shirt or your heart strings. Robbing myself of a hearts necessity to honor the pride of pocket change.
I hope she doesn’t hate me. That little blonde girl. I hope I can find time to honor her in my smallest moments. I want a life that is mine. And I understand that the world still spins even when I try to stand still. But I do wonder, if I could find my balance, would the world balance with me? Maybe if I shot for the moon, the sky would give me time to count the stars. And if I counted the stars, the sun might take his time to rise-just to give me a few more moments. And just maybe when the hourglass turns on its head, I’ll learn how to outrun the sand.