Nothing much

I started to write this morning….

I write long. And I have limited time. I didn’t complete what I started.

It’s now afternoon, when I like to get an hour in between work and Henry getting back from pre-school, but Donny is home and there’s some kind of ant-like bug that he discovered in the cereal cupboard. He’s had his hands in soapy water for hours and wants to take a break. We sit and talk and I come out to the cabin with only a half hour before Henry gets home. I’ve just sat down when Mia arrives, stopping in between work and her yoga class. Then Henry is home, running out for his cabin time. We engage for a while, then I go in to finish the cupboard clean up while Donny puts new brake pads in my car. (Honestly, he got the brakes done faster than I did the cupboards. Isn’t that amazing?) So, it’s a few more hours before I come back out, just wanting, I think, to complete a thought, and Simeon, (who I left on the cabin couch) will not, in his cat way, be ignored. I tell him, “Oh no, not you too,” as he wet-noses my elbow more than a few times.

This is what I did not miss while I was taking my break, the last week or so, from technology. I didn’t have any thoughts I was trying to get back to. It wasn’t that I didn’t write, just that I wasn’t needing to write complete thoughts (which is maybe dumb for a blog anyway).

I’d generally say that this is the writer’s lot, the writer’s life, but at the moment, I’m wondering about the whole thing and how it’s something I get tied to. It can be like having a column and a deadline (or so I imagine) even if the discipline (which I’ve never thought I’ve had) is self-imposed. I guess what I saw during this short break, is that, while I never write when I don’t feel like it, once I’ve begun, I can get driven by the need to “finish the thought.” That’s when not getting my writing hours really gets to me and I start feeling deprived of time.

And that’s how the “thought” I started out with this morning ended up becoming this posting about nothing much (which you might see a little more of).