I seem to be very bad at blogging! The last time I wrote here was when my son was 5 1/2. He’s 9. His sister is almost 12. His brother is 6. His other sister (who didn’t exist in her body when I last wrote) is 3. I don’t live in LA anymore. We moved to Northern San Diego county about a year and a half ago. It’s good; it was hard to make the change; it’s taking me some time to feel settled. I’m trusting my timeline is just right.
But here’s what’s happened—I’m not willing to not write anymore. I love to write so much. Poems, essays, reflections. My journals fill up so fast and I have other notebooks where I jot ideas which sometimes turn into actual pieces. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes because the line of a poem has become clear and I lie there saying it silently over and over so i know I’ll remember it in the morning. Or I get up and write it down, and once in a while, even if it’s 3am, I just don’t go back to bed. That’s what I want to commit to here—-to writing something, anything, in a format that isn’t just seen just by me. Because there’s something about knowing you could be witnessed. There’s a vulnerability and a risk and I take any chance I can to explore that. To me, vulnerability is a super power. I’m really really really not interested in being guarded (though of course I catch myself being just that plenty of times every day). l don’t want to wait anymore to write until I think I’m Good Enough. Or until I have a through line for the book of poems or essays. I want to write because I love it. I want to write because I am a word person—words are magic keys. I hunger for deep specific combinations of them. I seek them out and pore over them. I chant them and repeat them and share them. I love them.
So I’m committing. Committing to being here once a week. It could be more if I really get on a roll; for now the commitment is once a week, write something, save and publish. I am a big believer in the devotion inherent in practice. Showing up for the things we name as important, and letting the spirit move as it will or not.
See you next week.