It hasn’t been for a lack of desire to write. Maybe it has had more to do with the fact that the older two kids got old enough that I struggled figuring out how to toe the line between writing and invading their privacy when they were at ages where I didn’t really feel that they could even fully understand whatever consent to writing their story they might have given me actually meant…
Maybe it is because for a while here, in the absence of my writing, my life got pretty heavy and I wasn’t sure how to flip between the sad and the happy and the funny without seeming like I had no direction…
Maybe it was because it is hard to write words that my mom won’t ever read because she was one of my biggest fans, strongest supporters, most honest admirers…
It could have been because every time I thought about writing, I wasn’t sure where to post or what my platform would be or how to create a thriving website to try to draw readers in…
It was likely a combination of all of these that turned into the excuse that it just wasn’t a good time. And when you boil it all down, that is all any of those ever were. Excuses. Days and months and years of excuses. And nothing will kill your own dreams and ambitions faster than an excuse. Nothing.
The kids. The way life kept pushing. The fear of criticism. The realization that vlogs and TikToks and reels had strongly replaced the internet space for reading much more than a caption. The work it would take to get it all set back up. The schedules. The limited time…
I haven’t felt like me in years. But that is not a feeling unique to only me. It is not a feeling unique to moms or dads or kids or adults or any of us, really. We all go through phases where we don’t feel like ourselves. I just spent mine trying to find any part of the me now who felt like the me then while COMPLETELY ignoring the one thing that I could do that would bring some semblance of the old me right back.
I could write.
Here I have sat for years using anything as a crutch to hold up my own need to make myself feel better about not writing, when the one thing that could probably make me feel better about pretty much anything is my ability to write it out.
So I am writing.
And if the audience ends up being that of one…if the audience ends up being only me…it won’t be a loss. Because while I never wrote with a specific audience in mind, I ended up lucky to have an audience. And while I didn’t ever write expecting anyone to read…I was just incredibly fortunate that people did. Any time I wrote, I never did so thinking anything would come of it, I wrote because I love words. I wrote because I love the chaos of life and I truly believe there is something worthy of a story in every single day. And using words to narrate the chaos and beauty and humor and sadness that is sprinkled absolutely everywhere is something that brings me joy.
So here I am. Doing this one for me and grateful for any bit of it that might resonate with someone else. I’m not going to let myself worry that there will likely be zero fluidity or sense between the tone of what fills the page between one story and the next. Uncontrolled chaos. There is something freeing in that. Especially for a control freak. Thanks for stopping by. This could be fun.
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