Butcher Paper - Matter Of Choice

THE DECISION BETWEEN DEADLINES AND LIFELINES.

- Kristin Butcher

It’s time to pull back the curtain.

I’d like to pretend that I’m writing this column sitting on a beach sipping my second sorority-approved frozen drink. While I’m at it, I may as well pretend that most of y’all are reading this from someplace besides the bathroom.

As is often the case, reality is much less sexy than fantasy. Right now, it’s 4:53 am. Yesterday’s microwaved coffee is on my nightstand because I’m too tired to make a new batch and too uncivilized to care. My hound dog is sprawled across my feet while I clatter away at the keyboard. I’m sitting next to a pile of laundry that’s been on my bed for the past 10 days. With any luck, the kids won’t be awake for another hour, which means this is my time to write before getting the boys off to school and heading into my day job -- the one that’s also less sexy than writing for a magazine, but it pays the bills (a reality that my pragmatic side finds very, very sexy).

I’m already running late on this column. Sure, I could lie to my editor and say that I got sick while weaving the conversation-ending phrase “both ends” into my faux excuse, but I’m not going to do that.

My alarm will be going off at 4:30 am for the next several days as I write this column in the slivers of time I can steal between sleep and sunrise. But that’s the choice I made when I decided that I’m riding tonight no matter what. Tomorrow night, too. And it’s the choice I’ve made all summer long, leaving my body tattered with bruises and giving my legs a midseason cockiness that’s driving me to sign up for races I have no chance of winning.