It’s funny, no one ever asks me how I find the time to brush my teeth or put pants on before I leave the house every day. The question I always get is, how do you find the time to write?
Creating stuff (in my case, writing stories or drawing pictures) seems to be an ‘optional’ activity in the way we think about the world. It has to come after all the boring stuff. Work, commuting, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, bingeing Netflix, catching up on social media. After all, art (and self-expression) is a luxury, isn’t it? And I will admit, that there’s privilege baked into my life, but the people who are asking me about how I find the time to write aren’t the underprivileged, or historically-discriminated groups. That’s a whole different problem.
When the commitment to write or draw becomes a non-negotiable automatic activity, like brushing teeth or wearing pants when I’m in public, it’s no longer about finding time to write, because it’s already there.