You know when you hit those eddies of blah? That’d be me today.
Hot. Tired. A big weekend that demanded my being “on” brought me toward this little blah. Partly, I drove a lot. Driving on the highway makes me feel tense and therefore when it’s over, tired (and stiff). Although it’s not my usual thing to complain, I’m going to see where a little venting takes me.
Complaining… I have a story to finish. I loved researching it (the up side), with the down side being I have too much to hold in my writer’s hands and am grappling at the eleventh hour (I’d like to hand it in today or tomorrow). I have a blog post to write, too (oh, here it is). And I want a tad bit more writing time to revise a few pieces, while at the same time—letting my complaining self have the floor—I am unsure where to send the essays when I finish (where does a person send literary essays about motherhood these days? Any advice will be welcomed.).
While I’m at it, I feel a bit at sea as a blogger. One day, I hear from someone something like I love your blog and I feel all on-track-y and then another day, I feel like few people comment and I wish for a veritable flood of smart remarks (feel free, by-the-by). Maybe this is to say I feel at turns patient and hopeful and impatient and frustrated. As I’ve written about before, the putting myself out there aspect of blogging is something I find quite challenging.
Each week there are little writing-related highs—someone wants me to pitch something or recommends me to a publication or praises my articles—and each week there are frustrations—something falls through, a rejection of some sort—and those are really hard. Mostly, they aren’t enduringly hard, but they bring forth moments like this one. They are akin to something dropped into the writer’s still water creating waves.
And practically as often, I question whether I’m doing all this writer-ing right. I doubt my lack of laser focus or I doubt the self-promotion or I wonder whether I should try to do something else that could actually be monetized like PR or institutional writing. Then, I remember the job market is horrible and I want to be around for my kids and that I love writing if I disentangle it from the rest.
By the way, this is a microcosm of what I do in regards to parenting, my community service, and too many other things to list, as in, you name it I doubt myself.
Or, as my husband says of me, “It’s not easy being you.”
On the other hand—and really and truly, I’m pretty adept at getting to the other hand—I do come back to all that I love. I love writing. I love my thriving kids (I imagine that my camper—and I have been missing him—is fine, my other kids are more than fine I am certain and I have a lovely teenager houseguest this week. I really might go to a movie soon.
Oh and I have the cutest nephew ever: what’s more I got this totally sweet photograph of the cousins communing over their bottles. It is hard to stay too cranky when surrounded by such overwhelmingly adorable scenes in one’s daily life that is for certain.
