I was on twitter this morning, after completing a hand-out for a class I’m teaching tomorrow night for the youth at church. I happened to peek at my stream just after my wonderfully inspiring friend, Heather tweeted “@HeatheroftheEO: It’s your computer and you can free write if you want to – #JustWrite https://ow.ly/lsPyZ.”
Not knowing exactly where to start with my work for the week, I read Heather’s post and decided that an exercise in free writing was exactly what I needed today.
So I opened a new post and decided to just write. No editing, no focus, no idea where this will end up…
A photo I snapped with my phone this morning on my way home from school
I’m wearing the same shirt that I wore yesterday, which happens to be the same shirt I put on after changing out of my church clothes Sunday evening. It’s long past time for my shower, but after the kids are all successfully delivered to school, I tend to get wrapped up in the things that I need to get done while they’re gone. I eat breakfast, answer emails, approve and delete blog comments (depending on whether or not the latest comments are friendly or spammy), and set to work on any pressing blog deadlines that are written up on the white board next to my desk.
Today, there are only open-ended obligations on my white board – the hardest kind. Without a deadline, those assignments are so much easier to put off for another day.
My iPad is playing Canon in D and other relaxing piano music to help me stay focused. But every once in a while I get a notification which breaks that concentration. I stop to play a game of Gems or Running With Friends.
My mom is stopping by again tonight after a week at my sister’s house in Pennsylvania. I am grateful for the week I had with her at my house and for the time we spent together over Memorial Day weekend at my sister’s. But I’m not looking forward to tomorrow morning, when we have to say good-bye.
It’s hard living so far away from my mom. It’s hard to fit everything I want to do together into a few short days, and to share her with so many other people (This is a confession that I’m not proud of. Of course, I want her to have more time with my kids, too, but sometimes it’s even hard to share her with them. Apparently, even 38 year olds needs lessons on sharing graciously).
As soon as my mom leaves, I get ready for my mother in law to come for a visit. I’m fortunate to have a wonderful mother in law that I love and get along with fabulously, but I’m stressed about everything I have to do and the inevitable (and mostly welcome) lack of computer time whenever I have house guests. But a month of house guests, followed by summer vacation? That’s a lot of computer-time (which is working time) sacrificed.
Before I know it, the kids will be out of school for the summer and June will bombard me with scout camps and 4-day hikes and summer jobs and the long-awaited driver’s license test for my oldest (I’m crossing my fingers that she will pass on her first try. As good of a driver as I was at 16, I failed my first test…). And then July hits with a cross-country family trip. I’m actually looking forward to making the drive again – it’s been a while! – and tweeting and instagramming and blogging my journey from Maryland to Utah.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. July isn’t here yet. Neither is June, for that matter. Today, getting a shower is probably my most pressing task, followed by some photo editing, loading some dishes, and switching the clothes from the washing machine to the dryer.
Tonight, no matter what I’ve checked off my white board to-do list, I’m going to savor my last night with my mom…and appreciate the fact that I will see her again in July.
As I’ve come to the end of what I have just written, something occurs to me. This exercise, while probably completely uninteresting to the average reader (and for that, I’m sorry), reminds me a lot of how I used to write in my journal. I keep meaning to start my journaling habit back up but like so many other things I wish I could be doing, it has gotten pushed to the back of the to-do pile. Despite the fact that it’s a half hour before lunch and I’m still in the clothes I wore yesterday, I can be satisfied with the fact that I have prepared a lesson and handout on integrity, journal-blogged, and gotten 5 kids dressed, fed, and ready for school.
Now if I can just clean up a little and get Wordless Wednesday AND dinner ready for tonight, I’ll count this a pretty productive day.
(Be sure to check out the other posts linked up at The Extraordinary Ordinary’s Just Write…)
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LOVED this post from you :) Sometimes it’s good to just write. I do that often on my site. It helps my readers to see I’m not this perfectly put together blogger who has it all together. Those usually turn out to be my most meaningful posts.