Process

“I think your days off might be more stressful than the days you have work,” Michael said while passing through the kitchen. At the time, I was anxiously pushing the slowly browning butter around a square cast iron skillet, waiting to slide my sliced carrots down the plastic spatula into the color-changing elixir. A month ago I got hired for an hourly cashier position at the local big-box liquor store, so three days a week I process payments for alcohol in the same strip mall where I used to have post-church lunch when I was in high school. Having a paid job has liberated me from the sense that my productivity is entirely dependent on my creativity, but it’s also compressed the amount of time I have for writing every week, so if I’m working up against a deadline—like the one for our group workshop at the end of next week—my creative time can still be a bit stressful. 

There are so many books to read, so many essays I want to write, and yet the one in front of me seems so repellent that all I can imagine doing is lying down in the long grasses of the backyard and moaning. Michael can judge how my process is going based on the despair quotient etched into the deepening furrow between my eyebrows or the spontaneous wails that I unwittingly release into the otherwise quiet afternoon ambience of our apartment. 

Focus on one thing and make it happen. If you can’t finish the essay right now, don’t self-flagellate. Cook carrots with brown butter. Lie in the grass in the backyard, but without the side helping of self-criticism. Notice that the afternoon light is enchanting today. Remember that you’re walking downtown this evening for jazz.