Two months into my new life as a retiree and writer in the South Carolina Low Country, it seems like a good time for some self-appraisal.  How am I doing with my personal mission?  Before we came here, I set five goals for myself.  Join me in this and next week’s posts as I take stock.

The Goal:  To cultivate acceptance, wisdom and compassion for myself and others.

I vowed to slow down, give up the New York minute and embrace mindfulness.  

The Grade:  B+  

I have slowed down.  It’s too hot to rush down here, anyway.  It’s also rural and requires more driving time to get to stores, restaurants, the library, etc.  I’ve done a pretty good job of enjoying the scenery instead of muttering, fuming and otherwise giving in to road rage.  I try to be patient and pleasant when I’m waiting in line.  Once, during a long delay at the pharmacy counter, the person behind me complained and I told her I was a recovering New Yorker, trying to be accepting.  Turned out she was from the NY area, too.  But then, everyone here is from someplace else.  I haven’t yet resumed a formal meditation practice, as I promised.  But my informal practice entails floating in the pool on a noodle while admiring the palm trees and listening to the birds.  And this brings presence and bliss to my life.  These days, when I’m pressed to take on activities that feel burdensome or inconvenient, I remind myself that I’m retired now and my time is my own.

The Goal:  To savor the beauty of our new environment.

I promised to create a lovely home, enjoy the abundant resources of our new community and spend more time outdoors, soaking up the beauty of the landscape.

The Grade:  A-  

The house is shaping up.  After an initial burst of decorating, I’ve been getting a second wind (see the part about slowing down, above).  My husband and I adore the beautiful setting of our home, on a lagoon.  It’s like living on the Nature Channel.  To date, I’ve seen herons, egrets, ducks, loons, hawks, hummingbirds, copperheads, alligators, turtles, amazing butterflies and dragonflies and lizards.  Not to mention the palm trees, Spanish Moss, flowers and glorious Loblolly pines.  I spend a lot of time outdoors and have the tan to prove it.  While we haven’t ventured over to Beaufort or Savannah since we arrived (saving that for cooler weather), we’re  getting to know Bluffton, including the Old Town, with its quaint shops, restaurants and farmers market on Thursday afternoons.  We’ve only been over to Hilton Head Island a couple of times. Biggest reason for not giving myself a full A is that I’ve yet to make it to the beach.

The Goal:  To invest in relationships.

I pledged to outgoing, sociable and open to new activities and friendships.

The Grade:  B+

There are abundant opportunities to be active and social in our community and I’ve jumped into a few.  I am a dues-paying member of the Haven Hot Shots (alias, Ladies Pickleball Club) and play three mornings a week. This month, I’m starting the Women’s Book Club.  My husband and I joined Grapes R Us (the Wine Club) and have attended several tasting events.  We also joined a cool Dining Group, where groups of eight or so meet at a host’s home for theme dinners.  Each couple has an assigned recipe.  We had to make Buffalo Chicken Lollies for a barbecue this month.  (Don’t ask.)  It’s a fun, intimate way to meet people and socialize, even if we never make the Lollies again.  It’s also been easy to get to know neighbors at the pool, fitness room, etc. Where I need to push the envelope a bit is to invite folks over for more informal entertaining.  (Maybe after we get window treatments…?)

To be continued next week.

Dennis Lehane, one of my favorite authors, has always managed to transcend the thriller genre (cases in point, Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone).  He does so by weaving complex characters, richly drawn settings and powerful moral dilemmas into compelling stories.  Lehane has succeeded once again with his latest novel, the completion of a trilogy he began with The Given Day and Live By Night. 

In World Gone By, former crime boss Joe Coughlin finds his niche as a business whiz and consigliere to a crime family in 1940’s Tampa shaken to the core when he learns of a plot to murder him.  Having already borne the loss of his wife a decade ago, Joe wants only to hold onto what he has:  a comfortable life in Ybor City with his son, Tomas and regular trysts with his mistress.  It makes no sense for anybody to kill him, since Joe is the goose that lays the golden eggs for the mob.  But the ghosts and skeletons of Joe’s former life pursue him, even as he tries to elude a fate he knows he may deserve. 

This is Lehane’s take on the Godfather saga.  Like Michael Corleone, Joe Coughlin is thrust into a life of crime and comes to embrace it, only to find it a ravenous beast that must be endlessly fed.  Joe struggles harder than Michael did to find his own morality, navigating a world he sees in shades of gray, where those around him see black and white.  Employing several subtle devices to foreshadow Joe’s fate, Lehane produces a brilliant and haunting finale that has stayed with me since I put down the book.  

I hope Clint or Ben gets the film rights to this one.

Whenever I announce a new title, I hear some friends and family members gasp: “But where do you find the time?!” To my (likely insecure) ears, this does not sound like an expression of awe. Instead, it sounds like judgment—as if a full-time mother shouldn’t have time for a “hobby.” Bet were I a tax accountant with a child in day care, I wouldn’t hear such bemused enquiries as to my time management. Maybe it’s something about the air of triviality that making up stories has.

Let me preface all this by saying that, first and foremost, I actually am a full-time mother. My daughter is not in day care, nor does she have a nanny or a sitter. I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to raise my own child. My husband helps out, as do my parents, but in terms of full time childcare, they are the exception—I am the rule. No matter how I feel about being a writer, my child is not an inconvenience that I feel I must manage; my objective in life does not revolve around finding an arrangement that would free me up to do more writing. So worry not, skeptical acquaintances: there’s nothing wrong with my priorities. Yes, for me, writing is a legitimate need, not merely a want, but I never allow it to come ahead of parenting.

So how do I find the time?

I have very little of it, period. On average, I can’t work much more than about two hours a day. This, however, is both an advantage and a disadvantage. 

The disadvantage is obvious: it’s downright very little time in which to write and edit. And because I’d rather spend the time I do have creating and polishing, it’s my marketing that suffers gravely. Still, no matter how important it is for my sanity to wallow in my imaginary worlds (oh and how necessary it is!), I know that nothing is as important as actually being a real, everyday mother, so if she’s up, so am I—I don’t huddle up with my laptop and tell her that mommy needs a few hours to talk to her imaginary friends. 

The good news is that therein lies the advantage to working under such stringent time limitations: knowing that my time is not all mine, I am able to focus better and at least try to be productive in the time that I am able to carve out for myself. I know that I literally cannot afford to procrastinate because there is no time that’s built into my week where I can just make up the missed hours. If don’t write on a certain day, that’s it—that ship has sailed. So I must stay on course.

So when exactly do I write? 

Literally, whenever I can. I work past my bedtime and at every available opportunity. My brain is often working even when I am away from my manuscript or outline, playing out dialogue and settings in my head (maybe this aspect is at least partly to blame for my insomnia). I try to jot down ideas on my phone or in my handy notebook whenever they come to me.  Once, I even wrote a chapter in the backseat of my car while my daughter napped. We all do what we can.

The balance of it all is delicate and hard to come by, but such is the nature of parenthood, in general, no matter what it is you do for a living. I’ll continue being a full-time mother, but I will also continue to write. I am a mother first, author second…but I am an author, nevertheless.