AJ Alanson Author

Long to-do lists and deadlines punctuate my daily work but all the time in the world exists in between – if you know where to look for it. The atom is more than 99% empty space with a tiny dot of a nucleus in the center and the requisite number of electrons dashing around, but our eyes tend to focus on the dots and dashes. I suspect the world in macro is not so different. Only with our minds hopping from dot to dash, we’re never really allowing ourselves to float in the aether.

Ah… The aether. Where the muses live, where nothingness rules, where there are no words, no structure, no outside influences, no one but us. Truth be told, all that alone time kind of gives folks the heebie jeebies. So, is it that you don’t have time for yourself, or to think, or to catch your breath, find your bearings? No, I’ve lived long enough to know that time is everywhere. Faith to stand inside an unstructured universe might be what’s missing.

Admittedly, being “present” for the moments “in between” likely destroys the magic. If we’re consciously aware of where to find more time to be “productive,” we’d fill up the empty space with responsibilities and angst. Maybe, like stars to the naked eye, we can only look at these extra moments askance. I think of it in terms of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Well, loosely, but bear with me. If I try to qualify what my mind is working on in the free play portion of my day, I will know my velocity and lose my place in discovery. If I know my exact position, I’ve stopped the steady stream of my creative space. Best practice is to resist the urge to pin it down at all and just “be.” And that takes a discipline of undiscipline.

When I finished “Chipped Away,” a sculpture composed of wood chips and curls, I didn’t know if I would pick up my gauges again because I’m just so far behind for the year having already lost about a quarter of 2025 to the quademic. However, somewhere between the dots and dashes, I managed to gather new blocks of wood, cleared off my work table, and even vacuumed up all the old chips. Obviously, the muse was planning something. When I found myself whittling out the different colors in cherry, sapele, cedar, maple, dogwood, and black walnut, I realized “Sucker Punched” would, indeed, be built. And when I looked back, a new palette had appeared in between my chores and appointments.

Recently, I discovered this phenomenon in my writing. Instead of clocking my work time, “clearing my schedule” and hanging a sock on the doorknob, I’ve been leaving multiple works open and working on them when the words come. This way, I’m not looking, not fretting, not scheduling, and suddenly all the space in between belongs to me.