If people ask me, what do I need the most (other than basic necessities), I always tell them I need time. I need a big, wide-open stretch of time where there is no interruptions from my children or from anyone, so I can focus on my art and writing here on Steemit. As a stay-at-home mother (SAHM), people often assumed that I have plenty of time to do what I want - on Facebook or watching soap operas on TV all day, everyday. Sorry to burst their bubbles of fancy assumptions - that is so far from the truth. Maybe some SAHMs truly are blessed that they don't have to worry about earning money on their spare time and their husbands provide everything for them or they come from landed gentry. It is not true in my case. Every little spare time I have I use it to work on commission portraits or to update and promote my online shop or my coloring books and pages. And also now that I am on Steemit, I need time to write too. Though my earnings are small but they do help in paying for bills and groceries.

If I could, I would love to spend all day, everyday just to draw and paint. That would be lovely. I would produce hundreds of paintings and sell them off and make a huge amount of money. But if only. I guess there is no such thing. If there is, probably it is just a temporary state like when someone receives a grant or artist's residency). And once the grant is spent or residency is over, life will inevitably rush back in.

The author Herman Melville once wrote to his friend, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, complaining that he could not find time to write his book about a whale. He said he long for some peaceful time to write. However, that time never exist for him. Melville was broke and depressed. But amazingly he managed to write Moby Dick.

Longing for that long stretch of peaceful uninterrupted time is just a fantasy, well, for me at least. I just need make full use of what I have in hand, to create and write during the stolen moments or residual time. The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh says it wonderfully in his poem The Self-Slaved: