Button Chair
THE anxiety simmers and sputters, threatening to spill over into the sunshine of the day. I am consumed by the trivial things on my to-do list: E-mail this person, put the dishes away, vacuum the living room, balance the checkbook. And then there is writing. There is always writing.
My boys, ages three and nine months, are sleeping, and in the gold-tinged quiet of the afternoon, I am struck with the paralysis of indecision. Write. I pause on the familiar question: Am I doing enough as a writer to put myself out there? I’m generating new work but only in the silent predawn hours before the house comes alive. I want to knock out thirty queries per month like superstar freelance writer Natasha Khullar Relph. I’m lucky if I get out five or six. Ideas certainly aren’t the problem; they come at me so fast I can hardly snatch them, record them. But jotting down ideas is only a starting point. Am I doing enough to pursue those ideas, publish them, and
