neepeople.com

A few weeks ago, my husband totally re-prettyfied our old blog site at neepeople.com.  As part of that process, Jim had to look at and “tag” (something to do with RSS feeds and how the posts get populated on the WWW—it’s all Aramaic to me) blog posts going back around 7 years.  About that time, just after my David was born, and I was lost in the miasma of diapers, leaking breasts and runny noses that caring for an infant and a 15 month old brings, I decided I was a “writer.”  Most likely, this revelation had to do with a sense of lost-ness and needing to find-ness that arrived with full immersion in motherhood.  Those first two years were something akin to boot camp. 

Fortunately, I documented them, publicly, yes.  Perhaps that was a bit vain of me, but I reasoned at the time that I couldn’t be the only one feeling and experiencing these things and maybe it would be of service to some other mom out there in need of commiseration, a virtual trip to the coffee shop if you will, even if it happened after a 2 AM feeding when the house was finally, blessedly devoid of crying children and other assorted creatures vying for attention.  But anyway, fortunately I documented my entry level motherhood experiences because I’m not sure I’d remember them otherwise.  I joke, with a degree of wistfulness, that David’s first year of life is mostly a blur in my mind.  Bits and pieces tumble back, especially when I kiss him good night for the last time and the ghost of his baby face is most visible in his peaceful, sleeping face. 

As Jim read back over those entries he remarked, “The first years of our kids lives are all documented.”  I asked, “Was anything I wrote even worth reading?”  I think he told me it was.  At the time, I developed a small “audience” of readers who regularly commented on the blog.  Some of them I now consider friends, though I’ve never met them, in real life as the saying goes these days.  We read (past tense) and read (present tense) each others blogs.  I now keep up with many of those same folks via facebook.

As the years moved on, the blog postings became less frequent, as I began to doubt my ability to write.  I attempted to publish children’s books, to no avail.  Sent a few articles out to magazines…same experience.  No one really seemed interested in what I had to say.  My life also changed.  Increasingly, I took on more responsibilities.  First, I worked at home as our church’s secretary, to bring in money…then part time and now full time outside of the home with a 30 to 45 minute one-way commute.  Life, it sometimes seems, wants to squeeze me into pieces.  Somewhere in the midst of that transition, one of my cyber friends remarked, “your writing doesn’t seem like you any more.”  It probably didn’t, because, once again, I wasn’t sure who I was.

I’m still not.  Is anyone really ever?  I wasn’t sure I was a writer at that time my friends made that comment.  Perhaps I was just fooling myself.  The blog-o-sphere almost seemed like an egotistical joke to me.  Anyone, after all, can write a blog.  All you have to do is be semi-literate and think hightly enough of yourself to believe your opinion/thoughts/experiences, etc. are worth spewing into cyber space (admittedly, just like I am doing right now).  I stopped writing.  My last post here was some time in June, 2009, pretty much around the time I started my new job.

But, after writing more than one status update in Facebook that exceeded the character limit, and becoming frustrated with that limitation,  after reading my daughters short story, “Nail Polish,” and seeing her delight in the process of creating, after watching my son build a rocket in the middle of the living room floor last night and wearing underwear on his head and calling it a helmet, I thought, “well, maybe I do have something to say.  The claw hammer that pulled out the nail in the coffin were my husband’s numerous hints of me being some kind of writer, culminating with a “writer’s life” sort of quote in my email this morning, I decided I might have something to say.  Whether I like it or not, I think I might be a writer.  Perhaps a not very good, non-publishable writer, but a writer nontheless.

Thus, I’m going to be doing a little dusting around here…hence the sneezing and watery eyes.  I’m not really sure what it all might look like, especially considering that my life has changed and is parsed pretty much to bits.  It’s not kosher for me to talk much about my work as I need to respect the confidentiality of my students and their families.  But, I’m sure there remains some fodder for reflection.  And, I’ve decided I’m only going to the gym four mornings a week now, which leaves me one morning a week for writing…but I don’t want to make any promises.  Life is never smooth sailing, no matter how calm those waters might apear on the surface.

Blessings.

The quote Jim sent me this morning from today’s Writer’s Almanac, which, interestingly enough, I am subscribed to, but never seem to get in my inbox:

It’s the birthday of the man who said: “Becoming a writer is not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.” Paul Auster, (books by this author) born in Newark, New Jersey (1947), is the author of The New York Trilogy (1985–86),a set of idiosyncratic detective stories that deal with questions of identity and existential thought, as well as a memoir, The Invention of Solitude (1982), and several other books, including the novels Moon Palace (1989), Oracle Night (2004), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), and recently Man in the Dark (2008) and Invisible (2009).

*Damn, it’s scary hitting that “publish” button.*

PS…I couldn’t get the ole spell check to work, so, there may be numerous errors…