Being a working artist is great, right? I’m home. The house is quiet. Both men in the house who work are working. I have all this time. Right? Well I do.
I have a marvelous husband who likes that I’m an artist and who supports me and my chaos. “That’s good!” he says, when I show him a blog post or a chapter I’ve finished. “That’s great!” he says, when I tell him my agent emailed and says a director wants me to work on his film and am I available. I am, I tell my agent, not saying that a month in advance is too far to have any idea what I’m doing at that time. But I’ll be available, whatever it is.
I have a wonderful son who fixes things and reboots the computer when I’m stumped with error messages and hauls things for me when I finally get out to the garden. And mows the lawn without being asked.
However, in other words, this morning, I’m finalizing a grant, and clearing out my email inbox (and doesn’t that sound fun), and checking on reservations and hotel amenities because we’re going out of town next week and I don’t want to have to pack a hairdryer, and getting bills lined up since we’re going out of town at the first of a new month, and really, really, endeavoring to reduce the piles of papers on this desk so I can somehow get to my writing desk in another room, and piled with more papers but no email inbox.
I love my life. I love sitting here in my muumuu because I can. I love knowing my time is free of interruptions. At least in the house. The phone’s another matter, but I can ignore it. That’s what answering machines are for. I especially love that in a few days I’ll be getting on an airplane and sitting for two and a half uninterrupted hours beside my husband. I’m not taking the laptop (although I will have the tablet and smart phone) or books (although I’ll have my journal), and the only email work I’ll do is checking my phone and deleting the ones I don’t have to deal with. Like news. Or fantastic-sale-buy now! announcements.
I try not to think about the digging out I’ll do when I return.
However, right now the inbox is managed; the email I have to keep track of highlighted, and the writing room beckons. That’s strip of light at the right side of the photo. I’m close…just a couple more pieces of paper first; oh, yeah, and find my glasses.
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janetsunderland.com 
I really appreciated and enjoyed your post! Your tone is so positive and uplifting 🙂 Thanks for sharing your words and photos with us!
You are very kind. I’m glad it meant something to you!
For me, leveling the chaos means sweeping things into a trashcan with reckless abandon. Glad to see you may be a bit more . . . collected.
Ah, you’re good Jay.”collected” yeah, that’s me…I collect. I wish I had the courage to just sweep thing into the trashcan…but you see, we have a recycling bag and a trash can and I’m a list maker and if I don’t make lists….well…I sit blankly staring at the clean desk trying to remember where I put everything and what it said when I put it there. Ergo.
Your desk looks a lot like mine. Keep following the dream.
Thanks, April. Yeah, probably looks like a lot of writers. I keep shoveling it off and it just keeps returning, sort of like lost chicks!!
I really relate to this post! Levelling the chaos involves such a crazy mix of jobs, and those small grabs at creativity in between – thanks for making me nod and smile! I’m a blogging101 person and found you through The Commons!
Thanks, Louise! So glad you found me. Yes, bouncing between what we do and what we do….that’s kind of how it goes. Glad you related!
Nice to wander through your site. It’s engaging and clean and interesting. Well done. I especially like the little titles that pop out from the side of your small, square photos.
Thanks! It’s good to create a clean space on the blog to counteract the chaos in the real life office! I really like the photo of your office, with the gleam from the wooden floors (I love wooden floors) and the doors open along the corridor along to the tall windows. I also love blue, so I like your choice of paint for the walls!
I like that blue, too. Thanks! This was my writing room until son moved home and took over the larger room – the one that’s now my writing/exercise room. That was once the main office my husband and I shared. But son-moved-home meant us moving out of the big room and into the smaller room. But first we painted. And a bee flew out of the wall. And then we had beekeepers who took down the wall. And then we put up a new wall. And painted. And moved things in plus pictures. Eight months later, son moved out. Ergo. I have big room (where the light shines through), no fresh paint, no pictures, just a lot of Post-Its and a book plot written on three GIANT Post-It’s on the wall. There’s a whole series of posts on that whole process. Begin here if interested: https://janetsunderland.com/2012/07/24/the-wall/
So nice to be in conversation with you!