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After work today, I decided not to go home instead escaping with a purse, my phone and clothes on my back, not even toothpaste. I’d gone to talk with a social worker although talk is perhaps a reach to write. Yesterday morning, I woke to find spit in my face.
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How do I find the time? The real question is a far simpler one:
Is it essential?
We find time for the essential, after all. We find time to brush our teeth, to shower, to feed the dogs, to feed ourselves. We find time to go to work, to go to sleep, to go to the grocery store for milk.
Some of us find the time for other things we deem essential: workouts, hair appointments, Sunday morning church.
And so, the question isn’t how we find the time.
It is why.
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My only answer to this is that to blog, for me, is to breathe. It is to write it all down without expectation, unmeant for consumption.
There is no how.
Sit down at your local coffee shop and type out a blog post. Make notes on the back of your son’s artwork, grocery lists, appointment reminders, nursing meeting agendas. Write long-winded cursive letters to your future self in a leather-bound journal on a rainy day. Leave yourself voice reminders while sautéing the onions. Call a friend for a walk around the neighborhood and exchange random thoughts about your lives, your perspectives – the truth as you see it today.
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Listen, I know we’re busy.
I know we might have children, or aging parents, or needy dogs and grown-up responsibilities and a full-time job and you don’t understand, I’m already in an abusive relationship.
Write that down, too, if you’d like.
Say what it feels like to be drowning. Feel the shape of those words as they land on the page, or on another ear. Understand that this is your life – your gift.
Allow yourself five minutes to introduce yourself to it.
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It will look ugly.
The truth often does. Our mirrors are all a little skewed, a lot cracked. You’ll be tempted to bust out the gorilla glue for repairs, to twist your words into lies that make you sound like less of a jerk at the end of the day. Write those down, too.
Maybe we’re all jerks at the end of the day.
Choose to be one of the honest ones.
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So yes, blogging is essential. Writing is essential to me, and I think likely to you, and the how doesn't matter.
But the why does.
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Here’s to the stories we live, and the stories we tell.
May they be one and the same.
May they be one and the same.
(And may we wake to not find spit in our face.)
