I have a line in an early draft of a new poem that reads, “I sit around all evening, dreaming/of things left to do, dreaming of wasted hours/not thought wasted/until my unit of measure became scarcity.” This line came rather without thinking. It was the first attempt at a poem after River was born and I’m still gumming over this idea of what it means to use time well.

Writers think and write about this often: the mystery of process, which usually makes clear the enormous amount of time spent doddling, being distracted, drinking coffee, going to the bathroom….only to produce a few lines of poetry or a page of prose. I place no judgement on this, especially seeing as I engage in this sort of process regularly. But what measures time’s worth when we (happily) remove money from the equation. If time is not money, what is it?

There are heaps of projects I meant to have completed by now: the chicken coop (needs a roof); the writing shack (needs new windows, siding, floor, insulation, etc.); editing an anthology from a reading series which I help to curate; canning veggies and fruits…and really this list could go on.

It doesn’t include daily goals, like getting out for a run or canoeing for an hour, or even projects like getting my first full-length book together. At this point, I know a lot of people are saying, “yeah, so what? That’s life.” And I will respond by saying, “well, yes it is.”

My question, though, is what does a day add up to when you only get a quarter of the things on your list done? Where does the sunset fit? Does staring out the window at 200 year old big leaf maple bring me more joy than putting a roof on the chicken coop? Does it matter?

I’m not really seeking answers as much as trying to retune myself to this still-new life of parenthood where the first thing on my list is no longer me. It’s a fine thing to learn from, this change. It brings me back to the lines I opened with, smiling at the irony of sitting around, surely wasting time in someone’s eyes, dreaming of days when hours were more plentiful. Dreaming, I guess, of childhood.

Recording of poem draft mentioned above:

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