Hey There, Fellow Creative Interlopers!
This week I have a poetry comic that’s not a haiku.
For the past decade, I’ve done most of the house and care work for our family. That’s what has worked best for our family. I’ve also been a work-from-home dad that entire time.
Finding time to do creative work after dishes, laundry, and dinner are done is hard. It gets even harder when you throw in rides to and from piano and basketball practice, as well as play rehearsal and rides to and from school.
Our area doesn’t have a functional school bus system, and we live way too far from the city center to use the feeble city buses.
Our society doesn’t respect mothers, or care workers, or children and is mystified by men who carry the primary load of “domestic” duties.
For the past month, Becky has been too sick to work. We’ve been fighting the temporary disability insurance carrier to cover her absence and pay the claim. We’ve made some headway and gotten enough of her absence covered to keep the wolves at bay for a few more weeks while we deal with the rest of her claim.
Her illness has meant I spend time going wth her to medical appointments and fighting insurance companies (good thing I have a law degree and an annoyingly persistent personality). The upshot of that is there’s less time for me to solicit client work, and selfishly, less time for writing and art.
But the one thing that is harder than finding the time and energy to create when your life is filled with care work is living with the burden of not creating.
Originally, I had written a mealy-mouthed apology for posting a sad poetry comic. I’m an optimist and am mostly positive.
However, my mission with Weirdo Poetry is to make my corner of the world a better place—and sometimes that means sitting with hard things and sad emotions. We need to fully feel our grief and sadness before we can let go of it and move forward.
I hope that this poem will help you in some small way feel seen and free you of some emotional luggage you’ve been carting around.
Thanks for reading!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
No need to ever apologize for your work or life's circumstances. By providing those wonderful pieces of art, even if it's sporadically, is still bringing a bit of joy and uplifting a small piece of a our world that wasn't there previously.
Thank you for sharing your art and making your corner of the world a better place. 🙏