“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa

Time. We have all of it we could possibly need, yet somehow we never quite seem to make the most of it.  Whether it is taking time to visit a loved, taking time to practice your craft or just taking time to relax and have a moment for yourself.  Most of the time (no pun intended) we never quite give ourselves the time we need.

It hit me a few days ago that August has begun and with that comes the looming end of summer – a very sad realization. After finishing up some summer classes I decided to go full time at work to save up some money.  But with that decision came the consequence of only having a few hours left in my day to do laundry, eat and sleep and not much else.

I felt like a robot with a routine that was making me numb to the occurrences of everyday life.  I woke up got ready for work, went to work, came home, went to bed.  It was like a shampoo ritual: rinse, lather, repeat.  Although it was more like wake up, eat, COFFEE!!!! go to work, come home, binge watch reality TV, sleep, repeat. It was a more sophisticated cycle than washing my hair, but just as mundane.

That was until I had a spark of life in the midst of my robotic routine.  I decided to get coffee, but not the caffeine inducing beverage, but one that would boost my creative juices.  I went to the nearest coffee shop ordered a coffee and sat at a table with my journal and laptop ready to take the world by storm.  Or in this case to help break out the ideas that were shackled up inside the prison that was my brain.

With the help of a journal appropriately titled “Remember ideas become things,” I decided to record the creative characters and storylines that have been trapped in my imagination.  I also took some type to type away articles for both my blog and some academic sites only to stop and daydream for a couple minutes between each project.

For the first time in a while I was fully immersed in my writing.  I was filling pages with ink and typing blocks of text into blog posts.  I felt like a machine – but not the kind that I have been the past few months.  No, instead of being programmed by the day, with circumstances of an alarm clock, a boss and a pillow dictating how I spent my time, this time I was in control.  It was as if I was a transformer.  I’ve never seen the movie, but from what I’ve heard it’s basically when machines take over the world. Well I was my own writing machine taking back my world.

I felt revitalized and back to my old energized, creative self.  It all came back to giving myself time.  All I needed was a few hours in a coffee shop and I was back in my mode of writing.  I didn’t have the distractions of a TV, a workload, chores or even people.  I was retreating to a world that I could feel like myself again.  And boy do I feel more alive than I have in a while.

As I type this very blog I again sit with coffee on deck, journal close by and drowning out the fast-paced coffeeshop with a Pandora music station. Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” is now playing.  There is a fireplace so seductively swaying its flames and barely anyone here.  It works perfectly.  I’m able to drown out the existing world and just be present in my writing. When I hit a snag I can look up, out the window or at the person a few tables away and get the inspiration for a character, an event, or a theme and I am back at it.

It is quite a beautiful experience when we just give ourselves the time to be just who we are, doing what we love to do.  When we have that time, anything is possible.