Working Title

A talented friend asked me to guest post on her blog today. I am flattered to say the least. I know she is asking several blog authors to contribute, a cross promoting idea she has, but still I am touched to be in their company. Being a fan of her blog for quite a while now I find myself freezing up at the prospect. Fear! One of the biggest causes of procrastination. As my mind works on an ever growing list of ideas I am also working on an extensive press release for a company I am consulting for. Plagued with writers block I am so frustrated. Work like this use to be so easy for me. What happened? Husband reminds me I am out of practice and he is right of course. Getting back into the swing after not working for a year and a half is difficult. Of course, having a five year old constantly making demands while you try to focus doesn't help either. And then there is the guilt that trying to focus time on anything but my family is selfish. But most of all I think I spend too much time in my head.

I am very visual.  My imagination is a creative one and I visualize almost constantly. This habit makes me skilled at multitasking which can be great. I can reorganize my closet in my head while doing the dishes. But it also means when my five year old isn't interrupting my train of thought you can bet I am interrupting myself. Because my mind is constantly working I also have a gift for procrastination When your mind is accustomed to working on so many ideas at once it is hard to focus on just one thought and nothing else.

The ability to multitask came up in conversation with a gentleman who I would definitely describe as a smart, highly successful and accomplished entrepreneur. Even he admits that the ability to multitask is purely a gift only bestowed on women. A skill heightened when a woman has children. Men just can't do it. They can't focus on more than one thing at a time and they can't plan ahead very easily either. It's a miracle men have ruled the business world as long as they did. I replied that multitasking was not just a gift. To a woman with kids, working outside the home or not, the ability to multitask was a matter of survival. Especially when you consider we women are primarily responsible for creating and raising our species' children you can fairly say that multitasking is do or die. So we do.



Certainly the ability to multitask while working, managing a home and entertaining a 5 year old has been awesome. Love it! But the issue I have today is that multitasking only seems to work for me when attempting to accomplish many tasks. It does not seem to help one damn bit when I am trying to create. To give my thoughts substance and form. To get out of my head and focus on communicating to the outside world. My creative, multitasking, topic bouncing brain can't settle down long enough to finish a damn blog post in one sitting. (I am now on my third try) Too many ideas and too much to say. Do I try to fit it all in one really long post or break it down in 5 shorter,easier to complete posts? I must have ten posts still in the "working title" stage. Blog posts are supposed to be short stories not novels, right? And what if I finally do find focus on a topic but it is not in chronological order to the other posts I am working on? Is it better to have posted out of order than never to have posted at all? (The answer to that last question is YES! by the way.)

So many creative women, for a variety of reasons, can not seem to get started let alone finish. And that is a real shame. I will open up this question to all the fabulous ladies who have attempted to fit in time for expressing your creativity with the rest of their daily responsibilities without feeling like you are being selfish. Whether you write or paint . . . Whether you work with clay, pen and paper or fabrics . . . How do you find the time to make your dreams reality? And when you do find time, how do you assure you will have the desire? How do you get beyond the working title?
I hope others will share their experiences. Just a small task to fit in between the laundry, meal planning, balancing the household budget, helping your kids with homework, picking up your husbands favorite after work drink, finishing that proposal at work . . . .