Finding the Balance Between My Job and My job

I suppose this is meta- because I'm talking about what I am talking about.

I spent two hours yesterday working on a blog post I had intended to post this morning. When I woke up this morning, I realized that it cannot be published. Not this morning at least. Why? Because the first part of it is clean and neat and flowed out of me in a matter of minutes, like Athena from Zeus's head, though no one would mistake it for divine. The second part is the part I had labored on, and even though it has taken up more time than I have, it isn't ready. It is a treatment of someone else's ideas, and therefore I have to take the time out to make sure it says something I really want to say.

I don't always take that sort of time. Whether I should or not, I don't know because I am still at the very beginning of this process. What process is that? The process of taking my own writing seriously.

There's a struggle here by virtue of the fact that I am not a writer, though that is what I have always wanted to be. I am a wife and mother. As Nancy Wilson reminded us a couple of weeks ago, when she and her husband were in Tuscaloosa speaking at Riverwood Presbyterian, motherhood is a high and important calling, and I don't wish to devalue it. In another sense I am a writer because I write. Besides that I am a published writer because you are published the moment you hand something over for someone else to read. I've been publishing these things regularly, in various qualities of dress, for a couple of months.

Here's something I've been wondering about. Writing is work. It's a lot of work if you do anything more than a quick draft. Occasionally an email will take me 45 minutes or more to complete. If I am to value my primary job, which is running a household, as I should, how do I do this other thing as well? I imagine some people would tell me that I have to wait until the children are older and don't need me as much. I suppose other people would say I have to write because the writing is the most important thing. I'm not comfortable with either of these answers. You have to have something of your own is the accepted wisdom, and I don't disagree. But how do I do both: do them justice (my husband, my family), and have this something of my own (reading, writing, study)? It isn't as though I can really set them, my husband and children, aside when the need to write arises. It isnt' as though I can always write during those times when they are occupied with other things.

I imagine this is something that all mothers struggle with. I'd like to start looking around for other women who have a similar mix of anxieties, because many of them are bloggers, women who also have intellectual goals, but who combine those goals with a high view of the calling to motherhood.

Consider this a call for help. If you've been reading this thing for long, you probably already have an idea of what kinds of blogs I'd be interested in (i.e. writers, readers, University people, theology buffs). If you have any recommendations to make, please submit them now.