At Honolulu airport now, waiting to board my flight back to Chicago, which will be significantly colder. But the semester is over, just grading finals left, so I’m hoping that I can hold on to a little of the Kauai peace when I get home.
I arrived really…jangled, I think is the best word I can come up with. It’s been a hard semester, with several unexpected challenges, and while I had a relatively quiet summer, it was a similarly hard academic year before that. I was frayed, worn out, pummeled with relationship obligations, familial needs, work expectations (both externally and internally imposed). I was running ragged enough that I was failing to find time to exercise, time to garden, time to just…breathe.
Hawai’i is a good place to breathe.
I should have a few weeks when I come home to reset habits, and if I can, I hope to carry those into next semester. Get up by 7 and write for a few hours, exercise, deal with Serendib and SLF e-mail, plus any day job e-mail, teach on teaching days, grade or prep on the other days, be done by 5, except on the days when I have evening commitments (writing workshops, school board meetings)…
…I know, it’s a lot. But I can’t really complain, as much of it is self-imposed. Trying to figure out how to make haste more slowly. There are so many things I’d like to accomplish, but I can’t do them all at once.
At the start of this writing retreat, I was going through the list of projects I wanted to work on, and there were close to a dozen. Reader, I did not work on them all. Instead, I narrowed down to three — drafting a new middle-grade novel, because that was joyous and particularly appropriate to being on the island, and revising the Liminal Space screenplay & novel (two different projects, but they fed into each other), getting them ready to send out, hopefully early this week.
I made decent progress, and I’m hoping to work for a few more hours on the plane; we’ll see. I’m a little sleepy.
I didn’t get a chance to go snorkeling in the end; I skipped an opportunity yesterday because I knew if I didn’t get a lot of writing done on my last day, I’d regret it. The University of Manoa is actually flying me back here in February to give a talk to students, so I’m hoping I can squeeze in a little snorkeling then; I’ve never done it before, and I do love trying new things.
Balance — it’s all about balance in the end, for me. I want to do all the things, and I can’t do all of them, of course, but I can pack my life with quite a lot, if I’m careful not to burn myself out in the process. I feel like I end up writing a variation on this post every few months, but maybe that’s just what I need to do — accept the need to reset, periodically. To find my center again, so I don’t get washed out to sea.
Here’s a little bit of what I drafted on the middle-grade yesterday — it seems appropriate:
*****
“Now it’s been a little stormy, be careful of the waves. Even for the best swimmer, a maverick wave can overwhelm you, and the undertow can pull you out.”
“I know, Appapa; you’ve told me.”
“And I’ll tell you again. You know the saying: Peralai niraintha kadalodu uththam seiyum neeruzhavanuku than theriyum azhagum aabathu entru.”
Shanthi gave the translation of the phrase she’d heard from him so many times: “Only the waterman who fights with the stormy sea knows that beauty is also dangerous.”
*****
Goodbye, Hawaii. See you soon.