When Everything is Overdue

I'm trying really hard not to cry at the fact that my last post was nearly a YEAR ago.


Which means a year's worth of writing (here or elsewhere) basically hasn't happened.  I have a stack of not-followed-through-on post-its to show for it, others that I went ahead and tossed because they made me too pressured, guilty, and sad, and yet more ideas forever swirling around in my head, mostly unprocessed, waiting to be freed somehow.


It's not a good place for me to be.  Having a brain that is next to impossible to shut off and letting it run rampant for a year leads to not only the frustration of the accumulation of unfulfilled creative ideas but also the stress, anxiety, and sadness of keeping too much inside.  I realize that it's really important for me to process everything- little crap that happens throughout the day and big stuff that hangs over me, too.  And I'm such a verbal processor.  I need to either talk it out or write it out and I've had a huge lack of both of those this year.  No time to write.  Not nearly enough time to talk over things with Backtire, family, and friends.


And on top of it I feel bad that I haven't made a point to carve out time for myself to write (or get a haircut or exercise or buy sorely needed clothes or or or or...).  So, I rarely put myself first and then I feel guilty about rarely putting myself first.  Isn't that great?  Beating myself up for that?  It's like kicking myself when I'm already down.  Then I feel guilty about feeling guilty about it because I know that won't help anything and then I'm headed very quickly down a spiral of inner craziness.


Instead, I'm trying to remind myself of the good way to look at it: I have been in the throes of Fox's first year on the planet and Turtle's first year of real school, doing my best to do right by them, manage the household, and keep up at work, too.  Plus all the junk that goes along with keeping a post-second-kid-mid-life-mid-career-exhaustion-how-did-I-get-here? marriage afloat.


I already look forward to the days when I'll look fondly back on all of this!


So, here I sit at a downtown coffee shop with free wireless, having forced myself to leave the house with laptop in hand and make myself sit down and write even if it's crap and even if I put four posts up tonight and not again for another year, just to try to get back in it again.