When I arrived home from work, I made a point of taking my two-year-old son outside. (Actually, he was the one who made a point of wanting to be outside. Poor kid has been cooped up indoors for most of the winter!) A feeling of immense well-being overcame me as I stood on the sunny street watching him stomp purposefully into slushy puddles and carefully craft makeshift snowballs. I looked up to the sky and smiled. A little sunshine can go a long way sometimes.
It's been a long, cold winter this year here in the Greater Toronto Area. Today marked the first day in over a month that temperatures climbed over the freezing point, albeit barely. It was a welcome reprieve. After months of living under the oppression of frigid arctic air, 2 degrees celsius (about 35 degrees Fahrenheit) felt almost balmy. The addition of sunshine for the better part of the day only added to the pleasant sensation of relative warmth.
When I arrived home from work, I made a point of taking my two-year-old son outside. (Actually, he was the one who made a point of wanting to be outside. Poor kid has been cooped up indoors for most of the winter!) A feeling of immense well-being overcame me as I stood on the sunny street watching him stomp purposefully into slushy puddles and carefully craft makeshift snowballs. I looked up to the sky and smiled. A little sunshine can go a long way sometimes. I am not going to lie. One of the main reasons behind my decision to become a teacher was the luxury of having the summer months off. Though I came to the profession rather late in life, one of my motivations for working as an educator was the lure of having eight work-free weeks during which I could alter the laws of physics by becoming the center of the universe and force everything in existence to orbit around me – at least for a short while. Yes, I admit it, I was attracted to teaching because I relished the idea of two-months of unfettered “me-time” I could dedicate to traveling, reading, relaxation and, above all else, writing. Stephen Vizinczey claims that writers are born out of talent and time. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you cannot find the time to utilize your talent then your talent will go to waste. I have always believed I possessed a certain level of talent in writing – what I did not always have was the necessary time. Hence my decision to become a teacher was greatly influenced by the attraction of having two months a year I could dedicate to writing. And dedicate I did. After a couple of summers of false starts and dead-ends, I embarked upon a creative journey that eventually became The City of Earthly Desire. It took me three summers to write the novel and during those three summers I focused on very little else. I am confident I would have never completed the novel if I did not have those summers free. Thus, summer has become my creative time. I look forward to summer every year not for the weather or the vacations or the barbeques, but for the promise of having eight weeks to myself during which I can write. It is my time to forget the world for a little while and immerse myself in the cold, dark waters of my imagination. This summer has been different. This summer has offered no promise of writing; no refreshing dip into the waters of my mind. This summer there has been very little “me-time.” This summer has become a summer without writing, and I could not be more grateful for the experience. I did not have a chance to become the center of the universe. Instead, I was tugged into the orbit of a much smaller star with a much larger gravitational pull then I could ever hope to possess. My wife Melinda landed a temporary job in mid-July. The position takes her out of the house during business hours four or five times a week leaving the care of our nineteen-month-old son Matthew solely in my hands. Now, this is not a post about parenting; I will offer no clever anecdotes, heartwarming stories, sentimental observations, or clinical analysis about being a father or what experiences I have had taking care of my child. There is a whole industry out there that focuses on those kinds of things and I have no desire to add anything to it. I will say only this: the world becomes a much simpler place and you must become a much simpler person when you are caring for a child. Everything is reduced to its most elemental level while caring for a child. Days are once again dictated solely by the movement of the sun across the sky. Time adheres to a different set of reference points: eat, play, sleep. The outside world melts away. Your ego flares up occasionally demanding to be compensated for the sacrifices it believes it is making. You wrestle with it. Eventually, you learn to silence it. Once you do, you find your days become the sound of the breeze filtering through the trees, the patchwork quilt of light and shadow on a forest floor, the sound of small lungs drawing breaths, a smile at a skill learned or truth discovered. The dark waters of imagination grow deeper and colder and darker. You turn your back on it. There will be time to wade into it all again. There will be summers filled with writing, but this summer will not be one of them. There is something inherently beautiful in the acceptance of that. It carries within it a certain sublimity of which you are barely aware as it drowns all the aspects of your life you thought were so important . . . writing foremost among them. I finished writing The City of Earthly Desire a few weeks before my wife Melinda gave birth to our son Matthew in December of 2011. I remember those months very vividly. We had moved back to Canada that summer and I had no luck finding a decent position as a teacher. Those months of unemployment were a mixed blessing. On the one hand, with Melinda's belly getting larger and rounder by the day, I experienced a considerable amount of internal pressure building up. I was not accustomed to being unemployed. How was I going to provide for my family if I could not find work as a teacher? On the other hand, I welcomed the break from steady employment as a chance to finish the final draft of the novel once and for all. I maintained my sanity by assuring myself that we could survive for more than a year on our savings. In an effort to keep from eating into these savings too much, I spent a couple of hours everyday looking for work and sending out resumes and working a few small tutoring jobs here and there. The rest of the time I dedicated to writing - and I wrote like a man possessed. I was fueled by the instinct that I had to complete the book before Matthew came into the world because I had a feeling that I would not have much time to dedicate to writing after he was born. I was right. I finished the final draft of the book almost two weeks before our son was born. In a strange coincidence, I succeeded in landing a job almost two weeks after he was born. My life, which for months been little more than hours of writing supplemented by hours of waiting suddenly whirred back into the busy realm of everyday common life. I got up, went to work, came home, helped with the baby and the chores, and collapsed into bed each night blissfully exhausted. After a few months, I managed to set aside some time to proofread and revise and, with the help of my good friend Dave Kuswanto, I was able to use the summer break to finally put the book into print. Though I have been able to spend some time marketing and promoting the book here and there, the truth is babies are very time-intensive. I guess that is the moral of this post. I set up this site and this blog thinking I would have an easy time writing a daily post . . . not that long ago I was logging 2500 to 3500 words a day, every day, so how hard could a few blog posts be, right? Well, the lack of posts on this blog is the only the answer I need to provide. But it would be unfair of me to lay the blame squarely on the cute little guy in the photo above. The truth is I have become somewhat of an undisciplined sloth who is quick to make excuses for his lack of work. But as of today, I have made a vow to change that. I don't know what it was that finally got me going. Perhaps it's the promise of a changing season, a rebirth, a renewal . . . whatever it is, I got up this morning and told myself that I had to spend more time promoting the novel and this site if I ever wanted to find my footing in the world of the written word. So, long story short, I will stop blaming the baby for my negligence and I will post on this blog at least twice a week starting today. Expect to find new posts every Wednesday and Sunday. I humbly invite you to read them . . . if you happen to find the time. |
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April 2024
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