Gratitude

In a preemptive strike against the mild depression I can sense looming ahead (which I might get around to writing about in its own right), I'm going to try keeping a running gratitude list. I stumbled upon the truly beautiful blog A Holy Experience several years ago, and although Ann has thoroughly convinced me of the power of gratitude, I've never kept up an actual list. So here's a start at my own one thousand gifts:

1. Sweet bare baby arms, so deliciously kissable.
2. Ten long days of relative peace to focus on that sweet baby while the boys visit grandparents.
3. The best blackberries I've ever tasted, offered fresh off the vine by a kind neighbor (note to theoretical future garden ideas: Triple Crown thornless variety)
4. Air conditioning, a rarity in the mild pacific northwest but so very welcome for the occasional heat wave.
5. Visits from old friends.
6. Fresh blueberries growing literally right outside the front door.

Moving the Goalposts

My record is far from perfect, but I've managed to keep up my "20 min writing each day" for longer than I expected. Since it hasn't even been a full month, that tells you just how much faith I had in myself starting out. But anyway, I'm changing the rules a bit.

Instead of 20 minutes writing every night, I'm going to give myself 30 min of 'mommy time', which can be writing, walking, or something else to help me center and refresh. (Facebook or mindless internetting does not count!) I've picked up on the Pokemon Go craze, because of course I have, and our dog is a huge fan of the extra walkies this entails. For awhile I was trying to fit in both writing and a Pokéwalk, but I was losing too much sleep and The Mess was getting even more out of hand than usual. So I will compromise, with this caveat: if the writing starts to take a backseat, I'll change things up again.

I'm having a hard time tracking when is the best time to write. Some evenings I'll leave it until the last minute only to find myself nearly brain dead. On the other hand, I started out this evening without two brain cells to rub together, but after food and housework accompanied by the inspiring Hamilton audiobook, changed my mind and sat down to this ramble right before bed. On rare days when Pippin and Bella are napping at the same time I can sneak away with the Chromebook, and those are good days. Maybe when school starts up I can pull off the daytime writing more often, but with half-day kindergarten I'm not going to hold my breath.

Lesson Learned

So the first lesson learned from this experiment is that 20 minutes a day is not enough to actually write anything substantive. I had some half-developed ideas yesterday about mindfully celebrating holidays, but between the time limit and writing late at night I ended up with the mess posted below. Apologies for that.

I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination, and although I'm not planning to limit my writing time on purpose, life intervenes. For instance, late nights have become Right Out with the hobbits waking up at 5:45 on the dot every morning and Bella up at least once a night. Boring, but that's how it works in this season of life.

Should I continue posting every day, or allow myself to carry posts over for a few days in the hopes of producing the occasional coherent thought? If it ends up preventing regular writing or posting I'll go back to daily entries, but for now I'd like the option to sit on a thought for a bit before belching it out to the internet.

Writing goals

I need to write more. That's a thought I have so often and don't act on that its ridiculous. So here's my attempt to change things around a bit. I'm going to try to write 20 minutes a day, every day. Could be a book review, could be a family update, could be random ramblings, could be an attempt at writing an actual story. The end goal is writing a novel, but it's so far off at this point that I'm just taking daily excursions before even attempting the foothills.

I'm pretty sure I've started this attempt before and failed after . . . a week? Less? So I've been wondering what stops me and what I can try to keep it up. I'm currently trying to decide whether it will be more helpful to publish posts as I go along to keep myself accountable, keep everything private because I'm going to be writing stupid stuff and do I really want to fill the internet with more stupid? or save posts as drafts for possibly publishing later if I decide they're worth sharing.

The last option sounds like the worst. Either publish all or hide all, otherwise I spend far too much time and stress over what's worth sharing or not. *deep breath* Lets go with share all, because its the scary option and doing scary things is a good mental exercise. I'll exempt any writing I do towards a story I might eventually try to take up seriously--even then maybe I'll update with a quick "I totally did writing today, yay me!"

Tip #1: Do not sit down with computer in front of children. That's an instant invitation to beg for videos or playtime and then I spend the entire 20 min refereeing. Hide upstairs, write after bedtime, or distract them with TV or tablet first.