Somehow today, I started to think about all the things.
It started with the idea that this is my final post of the year that I committed to writing at least one blog post each week.
I began January 19 and wrote at least once a week for all but four weeks for the remainder of the year.
One week in October, the first week Evelyn was hospitalized, I didn’t write. And the two weeks after she died, I didn’t write.
It all felt too raw. Losing her was one thing; watching her die, well, that was a whole lifetime of feeling packed into a few weeks, and especially her final few minutes.
Actually, I wrote a lot, but I couldn’t trust myself to post anything.
And now, I’m done with that weekly writing commitment. Partly because it felt performative. Yes, it got me writing, but it wasn’t the type of writing that I have learned to benefit from through my writing courses this year.
I write all the time – even when I’m not physically engaged in the act, I’m writing. I’m bombarded with ideas and fleshing them out. Seeing where they go.
But when I need to sit down at this space, I back away from the ideas and the feelings and the words I want to put down. I feel that it is not a place where I can be the writer I want to be, the writer I am now.
I write as me in the past.
And that’s where my brain went today.
To the things and the events and the people that have shaped me; the past (including the way, way past – the “before I was born” past), the present and the future.
And then I went to the place of thinking about those same factors – events, things, people – who continue to shape me because I let them and not because they should.
Writing has taught me to stop running, but to turn and face those things that haunt me, that anger me, that propel me forward while still looking back, while ignoring the present, and not living within it.
Writing has grounded me in something that meditation allowed me to glimpse: the present. This moment.
For at least ten minutes everyday for the past five plus years, I have meditated. And in those minutes, I am nowhere else, but simply here.
Nowhere else.
Writing, although often a distractive activity, allows me to leave on the paper all those things that have buzzed, like an angry swarm of bees, around my head for years, always threatening to sting if I didn’t keep moving, moving, afraid of what could be if I stopped and let myself feel the feelings.
Writing has allowed me to turn and see that it was only my fear buzzing, haunting me.
I’d long ago outrun the actual negative things. Now, I needed to name them and write them out of my head so that I can move. Forward. Sideways. Wherever I want to go.
Writing has also given me another gift: a way to tell the stories I’ve always been creating in my mind since I was seven. The stories of the things that go bump in the night, that went bump in my life.
Of love. Of laughter. Of sorrow. Of fear.
The stuff of life.
Writing for me is sometimes like finding a piece of wool on the floor. When I pick it up, it becomes apparent that it’s not just a piece. It is the end, or beginning, of something that begs me to follow it. I begin to shape it, to wind it into a ball. And as I gather the wool, winding it round and round, I am taken up and over furniture and round corners, and down stairs, and the world I am in is poorly lit. But the idea of letting go, of abandoning the adventure of seeing where the wool will lead me, never enters my mind.
And then I have gathered it all, so now I must knit all the pieces together. And sometimes I’ll have to go back, pull out some stitches because something’s not right. Or I have to check the pattern, make adjustments.
Then after a long time, I have a sweater I think I like. Maybe.
And right there – the idea of a long time – is why the idea of writing a weekly blog post no longer appeals to me.
I can’t write well in a few minutes. I need time to do that.
And I also can’t put anything on my blog that I might want to submit for consideration for publishing down the road (because a blog is considered ‘previously published’ in the world of publishing).
So, if and when I come to this space going forward, it will be different.
I can’t say what that will be – perhaps book recommendations, or links to great articles, or, as always, rants about the government.
Or writing that is like that wool sweater – something I think I maybe like and want to know what you think.
So I’ll see y’all when I see ya.
Thanks for coming along for the year long ride.
