Because I can.

I decided to copy and paste my journal from today onto my blog - for accountability's sake. That, and because I can since it's my blog. I apologize in advance; you don't have to read this. It's more for me than for you (and I mean that in the nicest way possible.) Did I mention that I'm full-on ignoring my kids right now?

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So here I am again, staring at a blank page. I suppose I shall will my thoughts here. I spent a few minutes this morning reading through some journal entries of mine from 2004. Last night, we were babysitting a one-year-old and he somehow unearthed my old journal from the bookshelf, so when I went to clean it up this morning, I flipped through it for a minute and had a realization: I’m a really good writer. I’m not trying to say I’m better than anyone else – it’s more a matter of being able to clearly relay my thoughts on paper in an engaging way. Why did I quit? What happened? It’s been over seven years since I wrote those journal entries detailing the process of applying for graduate school, getting rejected and accepted, working with men that displayed body-disordered thinking, musing over my personal reaction to fad diets, my relationship with religion and its trappings and transcendental moments. While I’ve definitely had experiences in the last several years that have changed me from that person, I don’t want to lose that person completely. That person was a writer, a writer that had hours each day to do nothing (administrative assistant for an office with bosses that spent most of their time at another office) and – this is the big part – no kids. Love the kids, but they really are destroyers of time. My life has turned into a whirlwind of events that I can only summarize in Facebook status updates. Nothing seems important enough to really detail; it’s all insignificant. The three part-time jobs, the poopy bottoms, the peed-in bed sheets, the dog vomit, the bug bites, the open wounds and bloody mess. It’s like my life has evolved into a tangle of bodily fluids mixed with lots of driving (LOTS of driving) and trying to explain big words to someone who simply cannot fathom the meaning. In fact, I learned a lot of big words in grad school, words I’d never even heard before were thrown around as if they were common vernacular. When’s the last time I used the word ‘hubris’? ‘Oeuvre’? Yeah. Can’t remember. ‘Rubric’ does come up a lot since I’m a teacher, but I’m not even sure what it really means anymore.

Right now I can’t run and it’s killing me. I like running because I get to spend glorious hours alone and I can compose manifestos about body image and gendered politics in my head. Once someone cat-called me from a car (me? Seriously? Overweight, sweaty, white girl? Um, dude has bad taste) and it sent me into a spin of thoughts. As I carry my 150-pound, very dense body mile after mile, I have reason to thumb my nose at all societal outlets that tell me that I’m not good enough because I’m teetering close to obesity on high-for-weight charts. And then I go home and eat a piece of cake. Not really. The problem is that by the time I get home, I’ve lost sight of the revelations due to exhaustion, having to pee, needing to nurse a screaming toddler (she finally self-weaned about a week ago,) and then they are gone, or at least the eloquence behind them has dissolved into a mush of simple words that don’t sound impressive any more.

I need to feed the habit. I need to write. I need to find somewhere to get ideas and get inspired. I suppose that life is the best place to get inspired – certainly I can take offense to something in a television ad if I try hard enough. I don’t think anyone will read what I write, and that’s not the point. The point is to capture myself at a point in time. To remember that I actually thought valid thoughts and that I seem to have this overarching sense that they are important, at least in their current context. But how? Where’s the time? Where’s the energy? Why do I have to grade so many essays? Why are there so many dirty towels to wash? Another milk bomb? Can’t you people wash out your stinky milk cups so that I don’t have to encounter gelled chocolate milk on a regular basis? This is my challenge – to make the time and to make it count.