Work in Progress Wednesday

Work in Progress Wednesday


Whew! What a week it has been over here! As some of my readers know, my husband, Joseph, is finishing up his MA in English. He is also working for the University as a graduate assistant. The past few weeks he has been working on assisting a professor who is the editor of Film and History – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. This means on top of his studies and his time creating and editing videos for The Apostleship of Prayer, he has been swimming in a sea of papers. I call him the master editor. He spends his days editing visual images AND written words.
Factor in my job working with words and my commitment to personal writing and we are up to our eyeballs in proofing, editing and writing over here! It’s been really difficult to get any of this done during the waking hours of our children, so we have taken to living a double life. By day we are responsible parents and adults. Once bedtime rolls around for our girls – Joseph and I are holed up in our bedroom, working, working, working! He sits at a 5-foot table we have set up in our bedroom as his working space. It holds 2 computers, a camera, stacks of books and several wires I haven’t the slightest idea what they are for. He sits in front of the computer with his headphones on and I lie on the bed with my laptop. In the background we have Nick at Night playing on the TV (Roseanne is my favorite show of all time)! Because we have been working so hard into the wee hours of night/morning, the room is a mess with laundry and unpacked bins from our move over a month ago.
At about 2am one of us usually interrupts the other to express our hunger. We break for a snack, then sit on the bed, and eat something bad for us as we watch middle of the night TV.
Last night I realized I felt like I was back in college. Our bedroom has turned into a dorm room! I kind of love it! My husband and I didn’t meet until we were in graduate school. I was already living in my own apartment and he with a priest friend of ours. Therefore, I feel like I’ve been blessed with the ability to share a piece of my husband’s life I missed – the college years. The whole thing is wonderfully romantic and creatively fulfilling. Had we each chosen different paths, the bohemian lifestyle of up all night creating and sleeping until the middle of the afternoon would have suited us well. Thankfully, we are called to family life over here. We are currently enjoying both lifestyles - out of necessity. We are oh so tired though, so I don’t know how much longer we will be able to sustain our “door room nights.”

I share this all because it’s Work in Progress Wednesday. My works in progress are coming along well. I’ve got to have something to show for being up until 4am the last 5 nights! Not only have I moved forward on two half written essays, I’ve started 2 more! I am also reading the book Writing Life Stories – How to Make memories into Memoirs, ideas into Essays, and life into Literature by Bill Roorbach. I’m so excited I’m having a difficult time remembering to pay the bills or add broccoli to that meal I just made for Tessa!

I know this double life can’t last forever. I’m always a wife and mother first and will have to stop giving so much of myself to my creative endeavors the moment the other aspects in my life start to suffer. The girls always wake up by 8am and this mommy can’t function on 4 hours of sleep a night for too long. But, until then, I am going to enjoy my late night time with my projects and my husband. I know it’s not the conventional way of life, but we aren’t conventional people over here. And as for our children, I pray they too have artistic outlets.

Joseph's workspace