You Are Worth the Time

Generally speaking, I don't think of myself as an artist. It was never my goal to create great artistic works of fiction. I always wanted to just tell my stories and have people enjoy them. I just want to produce damned good entertainment.

This isn't mutually exclusive from the desire for recognition. I hold a secret yearning for some kind of artistic affirmation from the powers that be: good reviews, a slot on the best seller list, or some respected award. But I don't expect it. I don't ever really expect to do anything but labor in obscurity, quietly doing my job of entertaining. Perhaps someday, I'll be discovered, like Bach or Dickens, years after my death, to have been a transcendent artist and to have written classic works of literature proven by the only test that matters: time.

Hey, we can all dream, right?

This morning, I was woken up too early by my husband's alarm clock. I lost an hour of sleep on a morning when I was already set to get up a full 45 minutes before I had to be getting the little girls up for their first day of school. The little girls, who often dawdle to the point of driving me to insanity, got ready with a good will and are now cuddled up next to me. We have time to sit.

When I put them on the bus, they will be gone for the whole day, arriving home at nearly supper time. And the hours will stretch out before me, hours during which I feel like doing exactly nothing. How odd to plan on wasting a day on this particular day when I am already sensitive to the fleeting, and lasting, nature of time.

There is laundry to do. Pots still to wash. The bathroom is dirty. Perhaps I will do some of those things.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps, on this, the first day of school for so many of our children, we will remember who we are. We are artists--even me.