Sometimes I play the fifteen-minute-only writing game.

Sometimes I only have fifteen minutes in a day to write this blog. Anything above that is bonus.

Days have been harried, jam-packed.  Not to get into this territory too much, but you really have to teach kids everything. Seriously.  Most of them come into this world able to breathe, cry, eat, and evacuate waste. Minus a few motor skills, everything else has to be taught:  Nose blowing. Putting on socks. Opening packages. Holding a pencil. Math. Manners.  Relationships. Interpersonal negotiations. Fortunately and unfortunately, mine are full of wonder and curiosity (and energy), so I often am reminding myself that discipline/teacher proper behavior has to be like teaching them to ride a  bicycle. Consistent, calm, positive, hopeful. And repetitive.

They fall off the behavior bike a lot.

When I’m not trying to mold two toddlers into semi-respectable human beings, I write, I wife, I cook, I launder, I clean, I sit on some boards, I volunteer, I direct, I choreograph, I drive a lot to support other people’s projects.  When the stars align, I get to bake, or see a show, or read, or sit for 5 minutes and dream my dreamy little thoughts.  Often these all need to be done before the crack of dawn when my boys greet the day or after they go down to sleep at  night, when I am more zombie and reincarnated dishrag than person.  If I’m lucky, the boys will nap.  If I’m lucky the boys will have an independent day where they do not need to keep me in their line of sight (or,  in the case of Monkey L., within earshot).

So blogging gets sandwiched in between my feelings of guilt and responsibility.

My posts here are fleeting, and incomplete. Sometimes a gush of poorly-worded emotions. Sometimes an attempt at humor.  Sometimes ungrammatical, which doesn’t thrill me, considering my English teacher background.

I don’t always have the luxury of glasses-perched-on-the-tip-of-my-nose revision AND an artistic exhalation of my soul.

This blog is honest and knee jerk. It is embarrassing at times. It rambles. It’s not refined.  It’s me sneaking a peek at my heart, soul, and mind at any given moment.

It’s not polished. It’s not edited. It’s me and yet not. It’s unshowered, bare-faced, unshaven. It’s dirty. It’s small sometimes.

It’s ego wrestling with the higher self.

It’s self-aggrandizing.

I hope that continuing on this path, quantity will lead to better quality. It has to. That’s how it works with writing.

The good news is that my initial worry about having nothing to write about has long faded away. My worries about having something interesting to write about…that’s another story.

This week I wrap up two projects.  The final show of the production I choreographed/assistant directed is Thursday. My final school board obligation is tonight.  I will have more precious moments previously spent on those things and the attached tangential time-suckers: showering, driving, thinking/pondering/worrying. I worried about both a lot.  Of late, I stopped worrying as much. The show is actually something I am very proud of. My work stands on this production. I feel I redeemed myself and am grateful for the second opportunity to make things right.

My board work was something I enjoyed. I had to put into practice flyingby the seat of my pants, as this group rarely was able to put anything together in a timely or even early fashion.  Doing work a la minute isn’t my style, but
I can say that I got better at it.

So soon, I will have the time I craved to have some thoughts and figure things out.

My guess, as I’ve said before, is that I will soon crave another show…perhaps the one I put aside last year.

But I will listen to what I write here in my precious moments where I can check in with myself.

So far, there’s always been something there.