TIME by D. J. Adamson

A screaming comes from the house every night. It’s a wail of incessant recognition there was a beginning, and there will be an end. It has been happening for a very long time. Time!

I have never had a want for something to do. I grew up with a Midwest, Iowa mother who had breakfast on by seven, house cleaned by nine, gardened during the day, canned what she grew the next morning—after breakfast while cleaning house before gardening time—and dinner on the table every night by six-thirty. I held her type of schedule when I was working as a sales and marketing director: up at five, writing until eight, breakfast for the family, calls to the office, office, home by six, dinner on by six-thirty, reading, family until ten.

I thought getting closer to retirement would give me so much more time. I retired from sales and marketing into academia. Writing is still scheduled for a minimum of three to four hours a day combined with classes, grading papers….oh, and dinner on by six-thirty.

Don’t think there isn’t any play time. I’d be crazy not to enjoy this “vacation” called life. I have traveled extensively, United States and the world.

 I knit, quilt, and sometimes garden to get out of my head. Love to cook. And I started practicing meditation years ago. I am in tune with my inner self.

I know I am a clock winding down

We laugh: Books but no time to read. Stories to write but no time to write them.

If not now, WHEN?

There is time. We are given it every day when we wake up. My mother used to say “a lot can be done in an hour.”  She’s right. Scheduling is part of the key. I have come to my computer first thing for years. I had no time to publish other than small literary pieces when I worked as a marketing director and was raising my family, but I still practiced the art of writing. Stephen King once said it is good to have a closet full of first drafts. He also said that if you want to be a writer, you have to read and write a lot. He likes that word, “a lot.” I chasten my students from using it—overused, undefined. But he’s right. I put reading and writing in my day as just as an important a need as brushing my teeth. Are those first drafts perfect? No, but I do have to go to the dentist, sometimes. Now, I have drafts to rewrite. My schedule has changed from “needs to” into goals at this point in life. I work to put out two books a year. I have opened my closet. 

Tired yet? I’m not.

I never thought I would enjoy growing older, but the time I have today continues to be rich. Children raised, there is more time for me. No, not to be different than whom I have been but to continue to be who I am. So many people work to have more, be more, so they will be happier. But, I have never believed in this philosophy. If there is one thing about being raised by a pragmatic mother, it is:

 “Happy is happy, you don’t need something to create it.”

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

- Anna Quindlen

"Admit to Mayhem is a well-rounded, engrossing read that creates a memorable, believable protagonist and uses her to immerse readers in a series of challenging probes that end not in court, but in the very human realm of motivation and twisted purposes."- Midwest Reviews

D. J. Adamson is the author of the Lillian Dove Mystery series and the Deviation science fiction-suspense trilogy.  Suppose, the second in the Lillian series has just been released.  She also teaches writing and literature at Los Angeles colleges. And to keep busy when she is not writing or teaching, she is the Membership Director of the Los Angeles Sisters in Crime, Vice President of Central Coast Sisters in Crime and an active member of the Southern California Mystery Writers. Her books can be found and purchased in bookstores and on Amazon. To find her, her blog L’Artiste, or her newsletter that interviews and reviews authors go to http://www.djadamson.com. Make friends with her on Facebook and