Writing in the Cracks

Making the most of life's small windows

Back when my mom was first diagnosed, life quickly became a blur. We didn’t really know what to expect, but things took a turn for the worse quickly.

My parents had moved about six hours away not long before that, so we didn’t get too many opportunities to see her at the end.

On top of that, I was already feeling restless with the direction of my career. Something inside me kept saying: This isn’t what you’re meant to do.

It’s hard to climb out of a career you’ve pigeonholed yourself into and find a new path, especially when you’re not entirely sure what that path might look like.

Maybe I was just grasping for meaning, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility that years of stress from a job she hated had taken a toll on her health.

At the same time, I was self-employed, unfocused, and financially strained.

So, I took up Ubering until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

It wasn’t the worst job in the world, and it helped me compartmentalize everything that was happening—family, grief, uncertainty.

I often drove mindlessly with jazz as the theme music to my daily drives (and a pretty good conversation starter, too). During these drives, I would often come up with ideas for short articles I could write, either on my blog or social media account.

Not wanting to lose these ideas, I would repeat them under my breath until I had a break between rides or had to stop for gas or to grab a bite to eat. During those windows, I would pull out my phone, pecking at the screen furiously, putting those ideas to digital paper before they slipped away.

Writing in the cracks. Image created by ChatGPT.

Over time, those note-taking sessions evolved into short writing bursts, where I would knock out the post in a matter of minutes before I had to hit the road again—a constant battle between pursuing a passion and making enough money to pay the bills.

While it was a hectic time, those small writing windows helped clear my mind and gave me direction. At first, they only got me through a day of driving or from one post to the next, but as the habit of writing returned to me after many years away, it provided direction forward into what I wanted to do next.

Writing has always been there for as long as I can remember, even when it faded to the background.

In journalism school, several professors told us that studying writing is great, but if that’s all you know, you won’t have much to say. I toyed around with the idea of taking an English or History minor, but I never fully committed to it. I did end up getting a business minor, although that really isn’t interesting enough to provide fuel for writing.

But, during my hiatus between journalism and corporate communications and returning to writing (with a few pit stops along the way), the years in the wilderness provided me with a lot of hard-earned wisdom and growth that helped shape the perspective I have today.

And, fortunately, I read a lot during those years, which helped my writing mind stay fresh, even if it was mostly in the background.

But, as I experienced during those driving days—and I currently experience a lot now with my schedule growing very busy again—it’s maximizing those small windows of opportunity, even if it’s just a few words here and there, that keeps the writing fire going.

We can tell ourselves that those few minutes don’t matter, but they do add up.

We can tell ourselves that we’re too busy, we don’t have the time, the focus, or the energy, but we just need to maximize those moments, and it will come.

It’s not unlike working out. We tell ourselves that we don’t have the energy to work out, but it’s when we start working out consistently that we get the energy. In the same way, we may feel we don’t have the creativity to write, but it’s when we start writing consistently that the creativity begins to flow.

So keep showing up in the cracks. Don’t worry about writing a book or changing the world in a single sitting. Just make the most of the time you’ve got. Before long, words turn into pages. And pages become a book.