In the midst of crazy-busyness, it’s nearly impossible sometimes to visualize life without the crazy-busyness. I have to be somewhere by 8:00 every morning; I have to send all these emails; I have to follow up with all these people; before I follow up with all these people I have to remember to follow up with them; I have to coordinate this event; I have to attend that event; I have to look for new business; I have to prep for class; I have to grade papers.

The tasks pile up and I collect them like buttons: tiny clear ones with four holes, medium sized ones that are mostly black but sometimes brown or yellow or green, some with two holes and some with four, and a couple of over-sized buttons that make holding the little ones even more challenging. I carry around a handful of buttons with me everywhere I go. Soon I have to use both hands cupped together. Sometimes one or two buttons fall out because I can’t hold them all. So I start to toss them into a red bucket and carry the bucket around with me instead. The bucket is red because it’s impossible to ignore. And the buttons pile up, one on top of another, on top of another. Chink, chink, chink, buttons get tossed into the red bucket until the it’s nearly full and buttons teeter precariously on the edge of falling out.

So when friends and I have the conversation about slowing down, in my mind it sounds insurmountable — the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest. Because the probability of my first developing an interest in the extreme sport of mountain climbing, then taking on the intense training required to scale a mountain measuring 29,029 feet above sea level, sticking with said training, and following through on the excursion by traveling to the Himalaya is, well, let’s just say it will never happen.

The point is that in the midst of a discussion on possible ways to incorporate slow into every day life, I sit there thinking about my red bucket of buttons. How pretty they all are. So colorful. So fun to look at all the different designs, and every once in a while I dig through the bucket and find a gem: it’s the perfect size, not too big and not too small, just larger than a quarter. It’s silver (my favorite) and matches nearly everything. It’s simple: round with four holes and a beveled rim, the inside edge of which is darker than the rest of the silver, giving it a bit of a worn look.

But if I linger with my favorite buttons for too long, then the bucket starts to overflow. There’s a brand new layer on the top — all the mini, clear ones, each a single email message waiting to be opened or needing to be sent. Most of the time, only one or two buttons fall over the bucket’s top edge, but not too long ago there seemed to be an endless stream of buttons cascading over, and everywhere I went I left a trail of buttons behind.

Slow down? How can I slow down when I am carrying around a red bucket of buttons? What will I do with all these buttons? I can’t just leave them in a pile on my bedroom floor. They need to be sorted, organized properly before I can stop thinking about them. I’ll shove one batch into my left pocket and another into my right. I can put more in Ziploc baggies and deal with them one bag at a time. Maybe envelopes is a better system.

Sigh. I will probably never get rid of all the buttons. Baggies, envelopes, whatever. Even if I sort what I have and get rid of a few batches, just as I’m passing off the envelope with all the mini clear buttons, another pile comes in.

So last weekend for three whole days I didn’t do anything about the pile of mini clear buttons. I let them pile up. Instead, I did things I actually want to spend time doing like read, take a nap, sleep in, read, drink wine, eat dinner with friends, buy fresh flowers, and read some more.

Do you know what happened to that pile of buttons I neglected for three whole days? Nothing. It was still there when I came back to it on day number four.

Here is a story I wrote a few years ago. I found it while cleaning out a pile of papers on my dresser. It’s dated 11-4-93. You can do the math.

It was evening. The sun was just barely above the horizon making the sky a pinkish-purple color and the water was washing up on the shore. The ocean was only down the street and you could hear the water washing off the sand as the tide was going out. Not far down the river, a boat blew its high pitched horn, telling the security guard to open the draw bridge and let him through.

Peter sat at the window of the upstairs bedroom, squishing his nose against it like a pig’s snout, and his blue eyes were round with wonder. As the draw bridge started to open, he jumped up, gave a cry of delight and started down the spiral wooden stair case. He walked straight ahead and stopped at the sliding glass door. Then got a running start into the kitchen and slid across the floor.

“Grandma. Grandma,” he shouted, gasping for breath. “The draw bridge is opening up! Come on, Grandma. Come see,” he said, tugging at her hand. Reluctantly, leaving her pot of boiling water, Grandma followed Peter around the counter and out the door. On their way out, Peter was yelling, “Come on everybody! Greg! Danny! Tony! Come see the draw bridge!”

By the time they all got down to the beach, the draw bridge was almost ready to close. All the little cousins jumped up and down and squealed in happiness. They had been waiting all day for a boat to be tall enough to make the drawbridge open. Finally, it was here.

Just as the bridge closed, Grandpa came running on to the beach, leaving footprints in the sand and his silver dollar hair shinning in the sun. “Come on kids! It’s almost time to go on the boat to see the fireworks,” he cried, slipping an arm around his oldest granddaughter, Alicia.

“Hurray!” all the kids shouted. But, there was one grandchild missing.

“Hey,” Alicia said, “where’s Jan?”

Nobody heard her. They were all running across the deck to the boat, waiting for Grandpa.

Alicia walked up the steps, her blonde pony tail swishing back and forth. She searched for Janna in the sun room where they always play house, but Janna wasn’t there. Alicia continued to search the house, past the stairs and into the “mirror room,” as the kids called it because of the wall of mirrors. She looked at the couch and there was Janna, sleeping like a baby. Her brown hair was smoothed out on the pillow behind her and there were impressions on her cheek from a blanket. She looked so calm and peaceful dozing lazily in the late afternoon sun.

“Jan. Jan, wake up,” Alicia said, shaking her gently.

Janna yawned and slowly opened her eyes with a wistful look on her face. ” ‘Licia, I had a dream that it was time to go on the boat. We were just coming into sight of the Statue of Liberty. The you woke me up. Oh, it was wonderful.”

“Jan,” she said, “it is time. You’re not dreaming now! It’s time to get on the boat!”

Janna, suddenly awake, jumped off the couch and ran out of the house, down to the dock and waited impatiently with the other kids. All the kids were jumping around with ants in their pants, huddling around the gate that held them back from the boat, until Grandpa gave the word.

As soon as the last child was on the boat, the motor roared and they pulled away from the dock. As they sailed out to the ocean, all that was visible was the outline of the boat against the cherry red sun set.

Since venturing into the uncharted waters of freelancing, I have been attempting to market myself as a writer/editor. Most of the time when I say the words, “I am a freelance writer/editor,” I get a comical combination of blanks stares, quizzical looks, brow-furrowing or some variation of a facial expression that says, “what does that mean, exactly?”

It’s a valid question. One that I’ve had to answer, and re-answer for myself many times over during the past two years. When one says she’s a “writer,” people seem to assume that she writes ANYTHING. While this is typically true — freelance writers (and freelancers in general) do humorously compare themselves to prostitutes in the vein that they will pretty much do anything for money — this is not true for me.

At the beginning of this year, I identified some specific things about the types of clients I wanted: mainly they should be able to give me consistent, recurring business. Last year, most of my freelancing was for small businesses with a one-time need, which meant that I spent a lot of time on each project and each new client. This didn’t seem to be efficient use of my time because after I spent time and energy learning how to work with one particular client, I basically had to start all over again with the next, new client on the next, new project. I was never re-using the knowledge that I had gained with a specific client, nor was I building much of a relationship with clients because they didn’t have the need for an writer/editor on a regular basis (these types of projects were things like writing web copy for a new website, revising a bio, writing brochure and, occasionally, ad copy).

Identifying specifics that I wanted in my work and in my clients helped a lot. It meant I needed to find people who regularly create content and either need help creating that content, or help shaping it. I was mildly successful until life got in the way.

Life always seems to get in the way. My problem is that I’m in a perpetual catch-22: the stuff that pays my bills (and therefore takes up most of my time) isn’t necessarily the stuff I want to be spending my time and energy on. There are two columns — the income-earning column and the passion-generating column. How can I delete things from the income-earning column to make room for more stuff in the passion-generating column without going bankrupt? Or, is the question how do I turn the passion-generating column into the double entendre of one column that’s both passion-generating and income-earning?

Those are questions for another day.

For now, the point of all of this is to say that when life gets in the way, I get frustrated. I get discouraged. I start berating myself for getting distracted, letting things pull me away from the stuff I really want to be working on. But how can I berate myself for paying my bills?

So then I start thinking, OK, what is the one thing that I can focus on that will a) earn me some moolah, b) not sap all of my creative energy and c) keep me plugged into the world of writing and communicating (since that is the thing that drives me).

What I have discovered (I think) is that I’m a better editor than I am a writer. Well, let me qualify: when it comes to creating content for others, I edit other people’s stuff better than I can create original stuff for them. Unless I have creative liberty over the content (i.e., it’s my stuff), I should be the editor.

Anyone who writes needs an editor. Penelope Trunk needs an editor. I need an editor. In fact, I wish I had an editor. And I’ll tell you why: if you write the stuff that’s in your own head, of course it make sense to you because it came from your head, but as soon as you try to get inside someone else’s head and write what is in that other person’s head, your writing task just got ridiculously more difficult. BUT, to be the objective eyes on what someone else has written out of his or her own head, well now we’re talking. I can be the person to say, “this doesn’t make sense,” or “what do you mean by this exactly?” Because chances are, if it doesn’t make sense to me, it won’t make sense to most readers.

See why I need an editor?

In the end, writing is about communicating, and doing so as clearly and as succinctly as possible. Sometimes, no, most of the time people need help clarifying and fine tuning what they are trying to say. Writing is a process and I help people through that process.

More on what good is an editor to come soon…

*Today I wrote a guest post for my good friend and personal stylist (yes, I have a stylist), Kari. The title of the post is “Why I (you) need a personal stylist/thrift consultant.” Man, I’m needy.