I’ve always had difficulty in finding time to write. I have but a small window in which I feel I am in my most optimum writing mode, generally mid-morning to early afternoon. Unfortunately, I am rarely, if ever, able to actually get any writing done during that time frame. I’m so not a morning person although I have no choice but to be up by 6 am in order to get the kids ready and off for school. I am just barely shaking myself awake by the time they leave and I then have 5 minutes to pour a cup of coffee before it’s off to work for a full 8 hour day. The minute my work day ends, it’s off to pick up the babies, commute home, cook and eat dinner, and spend what truly amounts to just a few minutes together as a family before it’s time to prepare for and put them to bed. The husband and I are lucky if we get to spend a few exhausted minutes together too before we drift off to bed as well. I’m pretty mentally drained at this point of the day so even if I forced myself to stay awake, my writing would probably not prove very worthwhile. It’s definitely better to get myself to bed as soon as I can so that I’m as refreshed as can be the next day for those moments when I can write.

That sweet writing spot of the day, generally from about 9:30 am to 2 pm, is not my own, but I try to dash in as many sentences as I can between work tasks and during my breaks. And this is pretty much the extent of how I get my writing in: every day, a few sentences at a time, day by day until I have enough to string a post together. With this “method”, it can take me days to put together just a few hundred words. I’m good if I can manage to get out just a post a week, and if I can do that much then I am very happy. That’s pretty much been my only goal with this blog, to just get out one post per week. It’s been tough at times but so far I’ve managed.

Until now.

My last month has been ridiculously (and unexpectedly) busy, mostly due to registering Lila for Kindergarten. This was all a brand new experience for me and it proved to be gigantically overwhelming as the number of steps extended far beyond what I had assumed would be a seemingly simple task. My work schedule was completely upended so that I could squeeze in time to visit almost a dozen schools, breathlessly racing in and out to make sure I was clocked back in to work on time, and making up other hours during times I’m not usually scheduled to work. With that, and staying on top of application deadlines, it’s just all been extremely hectic and exhausting, to say the least. Add to that the last-minute preparations for back to back travel in February (welcome getaways but harried and stressful all the same) and before I knew it, I hadn’t completed a post in days.

I was upset when I reached day 8 and hadn’t posted. There went my one post per week goal down the drain. But as disappointed as I was, I realized there was so much craziness going on at the moment that it was understandable that I wasn’t able to stay on top of it.  It’s ok, I told myself, I’ll get a post out as soon as possible. And then I reached the second week with no post, and all of a sudden I was much less forgiving of myself. Now I just felt defeated. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but after that second week passed, I spent much of the remaining month not even wanting to write, feeling like I had already miserably failed so what was even the point in continuing.

And then, on a plane ride home, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself wide awake instead of the usual coma I slip into on flights. And during that blissful hour, writing was all that I wanted to do. So I got a grip, on both a pen and on myself. Yes, I’m disappointed I didn’t keep to my original goal but that’s hardly a reason to abandon the blog entirely. That would just be silly. There’s no reason for all this pressure; the whole point of the blog was always simply to reintroduce myself to writing, my favorite pastime since childhood which I unfortunately lost my way with during the rigors of college and early adulthood. And right now, I need that release more than anything. So I’m giving myself pep talks and encouragement, to go right back to stealing a sentence here or there, whenever I can, as much as I can, and to keep at it until the post is done, whenever that might be.  I will remind myself to pause, breathe, and reset, but don’t.ever.stop.writing.

I will not hit ‘delete’.

The journey continues, as it is half the fun, and positively its own reward.