While my husband has been away for a month, I’ve been extremely productive — embarking on a new job; completing writing and art projects; making new parenting connections. I wonder if my productivity has anything to do with being single, even briefly.
Is it possible that relationships — particularly marriages — take up energy that might be (better?) spent pursuing art?
In my Henry James class in college we talked about this a lot. James never married and was incredibly prolific — coincidence? James advocated substituting sexual desire with creativity. He thought marriage was deadly to artists, particularly writers.
I remember feeling this after I split up from my first husband (I always feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor when I refer to my “first” husband), I remember wondering then: ‘If I had not spent all this effort in my marriage, to what heights could I have climbed.’
No one argues that relationships take work, but once free of that work, even for a month, the possibilities for other creative and, let’s face it, better paying, work emerges.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 
Thoughtful post. Find myself pondering something of this as I prepare for an hermetic month in the desert writing. Solo. Sans bride, dog or telephone. Dreaming of productivity!
I will leave vicariously through you — there’s nothing I would like or need more than a month alone to write.