On Balance
by Debi Orton
Time seems to be accelerating lately, spiraling out of my control. It seems impossible that this is flashquake's sixth anniversary, just as it seems impossible to me that the horrible events of September 11, 2001 were five years ago. flashquake was just an infant then, and its survival was touch and go. I remember clearly that interest in our journal dried up to almost nothing — for our Winter 2001 issue, we received a total of 19 submissions.
I wondered if my colleagues and I had made a mistake, and even spent some time thinking of how to pull the plug. It seemed impossible to me that anything beautiful or brilliant could survive, so deep was the pall hanging over the Internet writing communities to which I belonged. That balance between life and art seemed irreparably damaged.
The entire landscape of American society has changed since then. Restrictions that were unthinkable prior to that time are routine now. People seem to have become sanguine about incursions into their civil liberties in the name of "homeland security." As proof, for this reading period, flashquake's editors reviewed over 400 individual pieces of work, and many more than the 30 we could afford to accept deserved publication.
Our little online journal has since lost its training wheels and is rolling along quite solidly now. Editors have come and gone. Two of our former editors, Jonette Stabbert and Barbara Jacksha, have given life to journals of their own, Amsterdam Scriptum and Cezanne's Carrot, respectively.
We've tried to do our part when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and we've celebrated New Year's Eve on hundreds of worlds with our readers. We've started offering online classes in writing so that others could share the sense our joy of flash. On balance, I proclaim flashquake a worthwhile endeavor, one that I'm glad to have sacrificed my free time to bring to life. I think back to those days when I considered abandoning flashquake, and I'm very thankful that I didn't.
But as time accelerates, it compresses, and pressure builds. Between my day job, flashquake, and several of my other obligations, I really haven't had much time to think lately, but things changed for me on August 18. We had already selected our contributors for this issue, I had already sent all of our notifications, and I was busily working away on this issue when the infamous Windows "blue screen of death" appeared...and took up residence. My motherboard and hard drive were toast. So was all of my work on this issue, my e-mail and the final copy of our submission database.
Fortunately I've backed up the submission database on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, I hadn't backed up my e-mail since May. Live and learn, I guess.
During the week that BestBuy's Geek Squad mumbled through every excuse in the book to tell my why they hadn't fixed my laptop yet, I was left ... net-less. NO Internet, only limited access to my e-mail through my office, and no ability to tackle 'side jobs.' It gave me time to do some thinking about my life, and I realized I need to re-establish some balance. Over time, I've come to the point where the only creative writing I do lately is the quarterly 24-hour story contest that Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly.com holds, and this column. One of the conclusions I reached during this hiatus from work was that I missed writing, I missed painting, and I missed a number of my other creative outlets. I want to come back to the creative side of my life. I want to regain the ability to spend time creating — without feeling guilty about it.
So I won't wait until New Year's Eve to make my resolution; I'll make it now. I'm going to strive for more balance in my life, and the place to start is to take the advice Michael Wilson offers in his Flash Writing Column. I will set my alarm half an hour earlier each morning and take the time to do something creative for myself. Michael counsels that 15 minutes is easy for anyone to find. If I can calm my monkey mind, perhaps I can find something more productive to do with my mornings than spend that half an hour slapping my alarm clock's snooze button.
I'll let you know in the Winter issue if I was able to keep my commitment.