By Janie Van Komen
Nobody really has "time." The concept of owning time simply doesn't exist. Time is kind of like a pet that has to be trained or a child who doesn't want to do his or her jobs. Time will find a million things for you to do with it and try to entice you into each one. It will occupy your space here in this life with diddly nothingness.
It must be harnessed and disciplined, but just like the child who doesn't want to go to bed or clean his room you can find ways to trick time.
Each day a person looks out in the morning and takes some kind of inventory of the day's events. Some of us have more control over these events than others do but regardless of your current status of time organization what you have to do can and will take up all your time. It's kind of like when I had my sixth child and I said to my husband. "I wish I had appreciated how much time I really had when we only had four children."
My husband's reply was that I really didn't have more time then. He then said, "Okay if you think you had more time when you had four children then pretend like you had to take care of two more children so that we had eight children for a period of time and they have gone home now and so you are down to six."
"That's ridiculous," I said. My husband agreed and told me that no matter how many children I had they would always take up all my time.
As I pondered this statement and realized the truthfulness of it I realized that whatever I was doing could take up all of my time. If I ever wanted to do anything other than what was required of me I would have to find a way to fit it into the cracks.
What I wanted to do was write. I made a commitment to myself that I had to write something every day. I must admit that there have been days that the only thing I wrote was my name as I signed a check for this or that. However, I have learned how to take advantage of time snippets.
I always have a notepad with me. If I am working on a particular writing project I jot prompts into my notebook, things like; the last paragraph I wrote on the computer; ideas for articles I am going to explore; who I need to write a letter to; etc etc.
At home I have the various things I am working on placed in strategic locations around the house. I try not to put everything away when I'm not using it. If I have to get my writing out of a box, drawer, or closet I am less likely to jump in for five minutes here and there. I have found creative ways to disguise the stuff so that it doesn't look like a lot of excess clutter.
While I wait for kids to get ready for school, sports, or something else I write. Sitting in the car waiting to pick somebody up from school, doctor appointment, or a bank teller who is busy, I write.
I don't watch television unless it is some specific program I have planned for in advance. I don't spend a long time talking on the telephone. I'm not a very good friend. I am very selective in the friends I do things with because friendship can be very time consuming.
I read while I walk on my treadmill or ride my stationary bicycle. (I've tried writing while doing this but I can never read what I have written.)
I make writing dates with myself. A writing date consists of going someplace to write. Sometimes I go to the library, sometimes it's a nature park, sometimes it's Barnes and Noble, but wherever it is I decide how much I want to write while I am there and try to stick to my commitment.
I make deals with my family. If they will let me write for X amount of time then I will do whatever the bribe is.
Very few of us have the luxury of unlimited quantities of time to sit and languish over our keyboards with no interruptions. With a little ingenuity and a little dedication we can each find cracks in our lives where we can squeeze a little writing here and there and maybe even a chunk of an hour if we are lucky.
Keep the secret of writing in the cracks a secret so that time doesn't find out that you are tricking it to squeeze more out than it has to give.
Showing posts with label Janie Van Komen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Janie Van Komen. Show all posts
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Writing Heavens
By Janie Van Komen
I think I just landed in a Writer's Heaven. There have been other heavens along the way. Whenever I find myself in such a place as this I savor every drop of the time I might be allotted there. You never know. This could be my last one, probably not, but you never know. I never take anything for granted anymore.
Two days ago I flew into Philadelphia for the purpose of tending three of my grandchildren for several days while their mother met up with her husband (my son) on a business trip. They only moved here in May so I've never been here before. They are only renting this home for now. The owner is a doctor of some sort who wanted the experience of building a home. My husband is a General Contractor and all of my children have worked in the construction business.
I can safely say from experience that this home is a million dollar fixer-upper. The design of the home is very unique but it stops there. After this man set up his design he probably built the house using a how to book about building a home. I think he purchased everything from Home Depot. Not that Home Depot is a bad place to buy things but nothing is custom, it's all stock fit awkwardly into a custom space which most of the time doesn't fit.
Hence there are drawers that won't open because they hit into the door jam that is too close, or cupboard doors that won't open because he didn't know he needed a spacer behind it to allow for the swing of the door to work, etc etc.
But the house sits on five acres of wooded seclusion and as an afterthought he closed in the space between the house and the garage and put a visitors suite above the garage, complete with bath. This is where I am staying.
I have the benefit of time with the kids before and after school and the weekend. During the day I have all of this to myself. The view from every window is inspiring. I can stroll up to the main road to get the mail and come back for exercise. I am sitting in the middle of history all around me. It's like the ghosts of the Revolutionary era and the Civil War era are saying, "You can do this." And I am. Everything from the kids to the comical house to the landscape to the ghosts give me fodder for writing.
I have been writing my little heart out. I haven't even punched a tv on button since I arrived. I wish I could stay here a little longer than planned but that's not possible so I will be grateful for the tidbits of time that do have and make it as productive as I can.
I think I just landed in a Writer's Heaven. There have been other heavens along the way. Whenever I find myself in such a place as this I savor every drop of the time I might be allotted there. You never know. This could be my last one, probably not, but you never know. I never take anything for granted anymore.
Two days ago I flew into Philadelphia for the purpose of tending three of my grandchildren for several days while their mother met up with her husband (my son) on a business trip. They only moved here in May so I've never been here before. They are only renting this home for now. The owner is a doctor of some sort who wanted the experience of building a home. My husband is a General Contractor and all of my children have worked in the construction business.
I can safely say from experience that this home is a million dollar fixer-upper. The design of the home is very unique but it stops there. After this man set up his design he probably built the house using a how to book about building a home. I think he purchased everything from Home Depot. Not that Home Depot is a bad place to buy things but nothing is custom, it's all stock fit awkwardly into a custom space which most of the time doesn't fit.
Hence there are drawers that won't open because they hit into the door jam that is too close, or cupboard doors that won't open because he didn't know he needed a spacer behind it to allow for the swing of the door to work, etc etc.
But the house sits on five acres of wooded seclusion and as an afterthought he closed in the space between the house and the garage and put a visitors suite above the garage, complete with bath. This is where I am staying.
I have the benefit of time with the kids before and after school and the weekend. During the day I have all of this to myself. The view from every window is inspiring. I can stroll up to the main road to get the mail and come back for exercise. I am sitting in the middle of history all around me. It's like the ghosts of the Revolutionary era and the Civil War era are saying, "You can do this." And I am. Everything from the kids to the comical house to the landscape to the ghosts give me fodder for writing.
I have been writing my little heart out. I haven't even punched a tv on button since I arrived. I wish I could stay here a little longer than planned but that's not possible so I will be grateful for the tidbits of time that do have and make it as productive as I can.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Writer's Travel Trunk
By Janie Van Komen
It’s never really convenient to write. There are always clothes to wash, weeds to pull, people to visit, scriptures to read. I think God set it up that way so that we always have some kind of choice to make.When I was younger I believed I would eventually have time to do everything.
As I collected more and more years into my travel trunk of life I finally realized there is only so much room in that trunk. Everything won’t fit. I am more selective about the trappings of choices I throw in and also about the ones I consider and then throw away. Startled at the revelation that the trunk was filling up too fast I was angry with my past self for dumping lots of tidbits of things I was only interested in for about ten minutes or ten days. Why did I waste all that precious space in time?
Then the writer side of me poked a pencil into a book and as I began to catalogue the contents, stories both real and imagined interrupted the mechanics of the record keeping. The record keeping was my excuse of acceptability to those who prefer I wash dishes or run errands, but the imagined interruptions rejuvenated me.
This exercise of putting my hand to paper is just as vital as keeping my family tree properly trimmed up. The choices of my past rise out of my trunk of life and reappear in some story like coins a magician pulls out of ears and other unlikely places. The choices, whether good or bad, are vital to making my life trunk valuable to a future somebody. My explanations, tangents, and imaginations spun out of those choices are my interpretations of the journey of my mortality.
It’s never really convenient to write but if I don’t, my fear is that somebody else will sort through my travel trunk of life and write what they think my story was all about.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
A Shared History with My Mother
By Janie Van Komen
Today I called my mother and said I was on my way to break her out of the joint. Most of my gifts and talents and certainly a great deal of my inspiration and encouragement comes from my mother. Not exactly the mother from my youth but my mother of the “now.”
For fifty years she acquired all aspects of the history of Garland, Utah and its surrounding community. It was time to write the book. Four hundred sixteen pages, one thousand pictures, and many sleepless nights later we did finish the book just in time for the town’s centennial celebration. Not unlike the people in Whoville of Horton Hears a Who, there were many important lives come and gone and still coming that cried out to be preserved in that tiny dot on the map of Utah.
Three weeks after we finished the book while my mother was selling it at the local fair she became dizzy and fell down on the road. After a few trips to various doctors the brain tumor was tediously removed and the life spared. Two years of grueling therapy and several follow-up surgeries restored her from not quite all of the damage and paralysis. She was so excited to regain her driver’s license and her freedom once again. Four months later when she and my father were returning from a day’s work at the Logan temple they were involved in a head on collision. My mother sustained a broken and dislocated ankle, eleven broken ribs, a broken clavicle, and her neck sustained what is known as the hangman’s break or the Christopher Reeve break.
In some great miracle she was not paralyzed from this, but the resulting disabilities, pain, and suffering along with the leftovers of the brain tumor left her quite a different person than she was when we wrote the book together. She is still inside the body but the body is not so capable as before. Now in order for her to get out of the house somebody has to take her. So, today I did.
After lunch at The Olive Garden we blinked our eyes and found we had spent and hour and a half in Barnes and Noble sharing our love of books and commentaries to each other of “you should read this one,” or “what do you think of this title?” etc. etc.
We laughed and sighed and shared until I had returned her safely back in her house. She gave me an e-mail on some current political prick of information. And then she shared with me a treasure from her bookshelf she had recently read, the 1916 memorial edition of Elbert Hubbard’s A Little Journey into the Homes of the American Statesmen.
Elbert Hubbard was the most sought after lecturer in the United States from 1905 thru 1915. His writings were in great demand and he was paid handsomely for his work. He interviewed people who had known famous statesmen or who were famous statesmen and among other things he wrote about them. On his way to interview Kaiser Wilhelm Elbert Hubbard was aboard the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine. This particular book was printed after his death. My grandmother had signed her maiden name inside the book. It had belonged to her before she was married. The beautiful leather cover is well worn but still holds it original magnificence.
I knew three of my great-grandparents. And because of two house fires, all three of them, my mother’s parents, and my childhood family all lived in the same house for a short time. All of my great-grandparents were born in the late 1800’s. I was born mid 1900’s, and my grandchildren mostly are born in the 2000’s.
Today as I touched the soft leather of that 1916 book I thought about how close in time this man was to the founding fathers he wrote about. I yearned to read his opinions and ideas about those men who shaped our nation. I thought about me holding hands with people from three centuries and wondered if other people will ever want to know what I have to say about those I have known and written about.
Janie
Today I called my mother and said I was on my way to break her out of the joint. Most of my gifts and talents and certainly a great deal of my inspiration and encouragement comes from my mother. Not exactly the mother from my youth but my mother of the “now.”
For fifty years she acquired all aspects of the history of Garland, Utah and its surrounding community. It was time to write the book. Four hundred sixteen pages, one thousand pictures, and many sleepless nights later we did finish the book just in time for the town’s centennial celebration. Not unlike the people in Whoville of Horton Hears a Who, there were many important lives come and gone and still coming that cried out to be preserved in that tiny dot on the map of Utah.
Three weeks after we finished the book while my mother was selling it at the local fair she became dizzy and fell down on the road. After a few trips to various doctors the brain tumor was tediously removed and the life spared. Two years of grueling therapy and several follow-up surgeries restored her from not quite all of the damage and paralysis. She was so excited to regain her driver’s license and her freedom once again. Four months later when she and my father were returning from a day’s work at the Logan temple they were involved in a head on collision. My mother sustained a broken and dislocated ankle, eleven broken ribs, a broken clavicle, and her neck sustained what is known as the hangman’s break or the Christopher Reeve break.
In some great miracle she was not paralyzed from this, but the resulting disabilities, pain, and suffering along with the leftovers of the brain tumor left her quite a different person than she was when we wrote the book together. She is still inside the body but the body is not so capable as before. Now in order for her to get out of the house somebody has to take her. So, today I did.
After lunch at The Olive Garden we blinked our eyes and found we had spent and hour and a half in Barnes and Noble sharing our love of books and commentaries to each other of “you should read this one,” or “what do you think of this title?” etc. etc.
We laughed and sighed and shared until I had returned her safely back in her house. She gave me an e-mail on some current political prick of information. And then she shared with me a treasure from her bookshelf she had recently read, the 1916 memorial edition of Elbert Hubbard’s A Little Journey into the Homes of the American Statesmen.
Elbert Hubbard was the most sought after lecturer in the United States from 1905 thru 1915. His writings were in great demand and he was paid handsomely for his work. He interviewed people who had known famous statesmen or who were famous statesmen and among other things he wrote about them. On his way to interview Kaiser Wilhelm Elbert Hubbard was aboard the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine. This particular book was printed after his death. My grandmother had signed her maiden name inside the book. It had belonged to her before she was married. The beautiful leather cover is well worn but still holds it original magnificence.
I knew three of my great-grandparents. And because of two house fires, all three of them, my mother’s parents, and my childhood family all lived in the same house for a short time. All of my great-grandparents were born in the late 1800’s. I was born mid 1900’s, and my grandchildren mostly are born in the 2000’s.
Today as I touched the soft leather of that 1916 book I thought about how close in time this man was to the founding fathers he wrote about. I yearned to read his opinions and ideas about those men who shaped our nation. I thought about me holding hands with people from three centuries and wondered if other people will ever want to know what I have to say about those I have known and written about.
Janie
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