Commitment or Being Committed

"Committed" as in sitting in a lawn chair on a grassy slope as nurses in long white uniforms, white stockings and white shoes (with a cap on top their well-coiffed head) serve you lemonade spiked with Thorazine - the "rest home" of 1940s movies.

I am definitely committed to my writing. I write something (even if it's "only" a blog) almost daily. I have three completed novels, countless short stories and essays and numerous poems. I've been published in the last three and aiming for the first.

But I'm 60 and my day job is demanding - time-wise, physically and emotionally. Sometimes all I can do when I get home (some days after 11 hours - maybe 4 of them in the car) is feed the cats, nuke supper, read snail and email and get on my jammies. I hear that writers should "hide the remote" to get writing time. I hardly watch anything on TV after work - Ghost Hunters, The Sopranos, Lost and The Office - all usually taped because I'm sleeping when they're on. I love books on tape/CD because I get my "reading" done while driving all over PA for work.

Commitment takes energy and time - not just desire.
Stop beating yourself up, Heather.
Learn from your Momma.
Take time for yourself and don't put everything into your job - no matter how much you love it or how good you are at it.

My tombstone (I won't have one since my darling daughter has been instructed to spread my ashes in a wooded area that I love) will not read: She was a wonderful RN and a great employee.
If I would have a tombstone I would paraphrase a quote from JK Rowling:
"She did the best she could with the talent - and the time - she was given."