Jul 29 2008
You are Not Alone
This blog has done what it was supposed to do…it has made me write much more than I was before. It has inspired me. It has pushed me towards my goals.
But it has also done something unexpected. It has helped me realize that I’m not alone. In just a month of blogging, I’ve met so many other people who are struggling with the same issues I deal with every day, especially those who are raising kids while trying to nurture their own authentic selves. My sister just found my blog (her webpage is the dragonfaerie one…cool title!), and she said, believe it or not, that she really understood what I wrote.
And I believe it. As different as she and I are, we are both trying so hard to be great mothers, to run households, and to write while we’re doing it all. I’m writing this blog right now (I just wrote “write now,” and had to go back and edit it!), but I’m also on a timer. The sprinkler in the front yard has to be turned off in half an hour, my son still hasn’t gotten his breakfast, and I have to call the doctor in forty minutes because my daughter has a persistent–and scary–cough. And I’m lucky, for I’m mostly at home.
My sister isn’t. So she is trying to keep a house running while also working full-time. And taking care of three fabulous kids (even if I haven’t met the last one yet, Roxanne was born on my birthday, so she must also be fabulous). Yet she’s also writing, often staying up late into the night to finish a chapter, revise a section, or read my blog (thanks!).
I know I’m not alone…so what is it that you are trying to balance? What do you neglect when your kids get sick, or the car needs new tires, or the dishes pile up in the sink? What is your heart longing for, that you’ve put too far down on your list of things-to-do?
Well, I don’t have kids, but…
I miss going out and looking for ideas in new and inventive ways. Most of what I do nowadays, I do because I have to and not because I want to. This needs to be rectified.
I couldn’t take a 2.5-hour commute. That sounds GHASTLY. I think we tend to fit writing into everything else, like it’s not important, so we can only do it once the dishes are done, papers are graded, kids are bathed, work is finished, etc.
The people in our lives don’t understand it quite, either. My husband doesn’t see how writing can pull me away from watching “Man v. Wild” with him…but it pulls at me.
Some writers are at the other extreme. I remember seeing one acknowledgements page where a writer thanked her husband and two young daughters (3 and 5?) for letting her lock herself in her office for nine months to write, to “give birth” to this new baby. The metaphor was interesting, but I cannot allow myself the same distance from my family. I’m not at home so that I can ignore my kids all day. And, if she was writing while he was at work, who was watching the little ones?
Sounds like we are all finding our balance. I hope, ravyn, you get to do more of what you want to in the future. I hope that for all of us.