To make light of the reasons why I haven’t had the chance to write as I usually would, with free afternoons and long hours stretched out before me, I feel inclined to write about yesterday’s example.

I was supposed to accompany my partner on a weekend trip with his friends. However, after finding out that the train and my work schedules didn’t align, I ended up staying home. I didn’t mind. They had planned everything, and I thought it would be the perfect chance to sit and write with no interruptions.

I woke up at 8:30, made my coffee, and smoked while I read on WordPress and Fable. After my third drag, I decided that cleaning the house would help clear my thoughts. Twenty minutes. That’s all I gave myself to sort out the space I would be in for the next two days.

But as I started one task, I abandoned it for another — like a game of categories. The issue wasn’t the thirty half-finished projects in my apartment. Now, the issue was my flooded balcony.

I could have waited, since it had stormed the night before. But I thought, “It’ll take five minutes, and then I’ll finally be able to focus.”

So I pushed a pencil down the pipes to clear out the leaves. Nothing drained. The water remained stagnant. I gave up and moved on to the next task: a shower. I deserved it after starting so many chores.

The next “essential” step to writing, obviously, was pouring coconut oil into my hair because my ends had been dry since the beach. I drenched my hair in oil. That’s when the phone began to ring.

Five calls from my landlord. Two messages from my partner. One person banging at my door far too long.

You should know: the thought of anything happening that would require this reaction is my biggest fear. I lock the door too often, keep quiet to avoid complaints, and even jump at the smell of someone else’s toaster.

I wrapped a towel around myself and opened the door when the knocking would not stop. My legs shook. A woman I didn’t recognize glanced around my messy hall and asked if she could come in. “There’s a problem with your balcony.”

Fuck.

I apologized for the mess as oil dripped into my eyes. She laughed at the sight of me and left. As the sweat turned cold on my skin, my phone buzzed again: my landlord letting me know a technician would be up in an hour.

It seems my attempt at clearing the drains sent water down onto the pavement below. Since my balcony is the only one on the entire façade, it wasn’t hard to figure out who was responsible.

I cleaned frantically. Twenty minutes turned into an hour and a half of deep cleaning. Hours later, the technician finally came. By then, the sun had set.

I had started the day hoping for quiet hours of writing. Instead, I ended up with a cleaner apartment, a cleared balcony, and a story about not being able to balance writing with chaos.

Maybe I am wrong to see life as something that “gets in the way” of writing. Maybe it is the subject of my work.