I don’t have the time to be doing this.
I know this because if I had the time to be writing for a blog, I would also have the time to
- empty the dishwasher
- mop the floors every week
- sweep every main room daily
- clean the bathrooms way more often
- meal prep healthy meals for the girls
- take care of the flower garden
- clean out my garage
- …
I know exactly what I am not spending time on because my mother never misses an opportunity to tell me, God bless her. It’s as though she thinks I’m genuinely unaware that I have dishes in the sink and ants in a corner of my living room.
So, as you see, I really don’t have the time to be doing this…
…except every time I tell stories about the sass that escapes my 2 year old’s mouth, every anecdote I answer to someone’s “how are the girls?”, gets the same general response:
“Oh wow, that’s hilarious! You should be writing this somewhere!”
The ladies at church went a little further. “You need to write a book, Josie” my aunt said after service. Independently, two other women approached me, asked how my week had been, practically broke a hip laughing, and then recommended I save these stories for a book.
A book…
I don’t have time for a book!
One thing you should know about me is that I have a knack for spinning a real story into the kind of tale that ends with “-and it was this big”. When working with at least a speck of truth, I can weave together emotions, painting literary-level archetypes out of people who were there or delivering a punchline I really only thought up five minutes too late.
The flip side of this amazing gift is that unless the story I’m telling is true, I am the most clumsy, prosaic writer on this planet.
On my laptop there is a folder. The folder is named “Graveyard of Tales” because my flair for drama exceeds even my own ability to cope with it. Inside lie a number of files. Some of them have clever, creative titles. When they do, it’s a glaring sign that they’re going to be largely empty. Others bear brutally brusque names like “1” and “thisissobad.word”. These are the ones I have fleshed out enough to hate.
I drove home from church that day, and I thought.
Not at that moment, of course! I’m a mom. Even if I wanted to, my brain can only handle two inputs at a time, and if both of my kids exist in the same room as me, that’s tapped out.
But I really did think about it when they were in bed. I opened my laptop and used more of that time I don’t have and looked up how a book gets published.
Have you ever sat down and looked at what it would take, what it would really take, being realistic, to achieve your dreams?
I’m guessing that 98% of the people who said yes know the exact sinking feeling I experienced that evening.
WRITE A BOOK → FIND A MORE REALISTIC DREAM
Cool…
I mean…
I still really don’t have time for this.
It took a few more days, but my brain kept turning the idea over like a set of keys on a first date, and after a few days, I had latched onto the idea of a blog. By the end of a week, I had 10 titles for potential blog posts written on the envelope my mothers day card had come in, and a week after that I was probing close friends to pick their favorite of a couple different ideas to name the blog.
So here we are. This is my blog.
Finding my “niche” felt obvious. Any parent knows how motherhood/fatherhood can creep into your whole life like a particularly benign fungus, invading your sense of identity so surreptitiously and completely that before you know it, you recognize Mom/Dad easier than your own name.
My kids are the most incredible, important, and irritating blessings of my life. They move me to tears, both by being the most adorable little girls on the planet (sorry that’s just a fact) and by being the most suicidal and idiotically fearless toddlers I have ever seen.
I am going to complain about them. SO much. You are going to laugh at them. At them, and not with them – toddlers are the most absurd humans on this entire planet. We are going to marvel together at the insane sentences I hear come out of tiny mouths, you will clutch your sides in peals of laughter as you picture my exasperation, and my toddlers will emerge so thoroughly roasted that Gordon Ramsey would serve them as a gourmet entree.
But again, and I really need to stress this:
I don’t have any time for this.
So…see you in a couple of days.