Dreams and daydreams

How can it be the middle of May already? I swear I just put away the Christmas stuff, and now the middle of the year is looming! Time sure is getting screwy. On Friday I had three whole hours in the morning to write. THREE! That's a huge block of time for someone like me who usually squeezes a paragraph out between phone calls and scribbles a page or two on the bus on the way home from work.

But that three hours disappeared faster than a blink. I got a lot done, but the time just seemed to melt away. Imagine what I'd be able to achieve if I had three hours every day. Or more. I dream of that. Of having more time to write. Of not having to get up at 5.30am to get an hour or so before the kids get up and start demanding breakfast; of not staying up until all hours to finish that chapter. I dream of sleeping more than five hours a night.

I also dream of having a space of my own to write in. I share a desk with my partner, and it's in the dining room, right in the middle of the thoroughfare between the kitchen and the rest of the house. So people are always wandering through, and the dirty dishes and crumbs under the table stare accusingly at me if I'm writing instead of taking care of them. I read real-estate ads obsessively, staring at the photographs of the new houses and imagining my own little writing room somewhere in them. It doesn't need to be big; it just needs to be mine.

I want a space where I can spread my notes out next to the computer and leave them there. I want to be able to leave my marked-up drafts where they are so I know where I'm up to when I come back.

What do you dream of? Do you ever have enough time to do everything you want or need to do? What about space? Do you have your own dedicated writing space?