Aimee Stahlberg

I promised myself that I would find time to write during the seven weeks that I was Stage Manager for a group of 20 teenagers. I swore to myself I would get at least two more chapters of my novel written. The closest I got was rewriting work, and rereading work, that I had previously written. Or maybe I can count those fleeting moments between shows where I’d think about something one of my characters might say or do, thinking it was brilliant, and not write it down.

If I could write a book with the time that I booked writing notes on the play they were performing, notes that I had for each kid, and about their individual growth as human beings, I certainly would have accomplished my goal. But that’s not what my book is about.

For the first time, I’m realizing how hard it really is to want myself to have real world goals and real writer goals. It’s scary to realize that one can get in the way of the other, that one can stop me from accomplishing the other. It makes me scared that I’m losing interest in one if I put all the energy I have into the other. “Have I lost my passion for my own work if all I want to do is teach?” I hear myself asking this all the time. Am I looking for things to keep myself busy so that I don’t finish? Am I avoiding it?

After seven weeks of working with these kids, I was run ragged. My sinuses ached, I had two straight days of migraines, and I wanted nothing more than to hibernate. Don’t get me wrong, the kids were great, but I almost felt as though I’d gone through my undergraduate career all over again. I had all those same aches and pains that I had to push through in less than 24 hours so I could finish wedding preparation in 2011.

My body is finally starting to feel recovered. And I’m finally starting to feel ready to get back to writing.