I rarely sit down at my computer. I usually have at least 2 or 3 emails waiting for replies, and I often have a pile of mental notes dancing around in my brain, faintly reminding me to read a certain blog or to check a certain sale or to find a certain recipe. Oh, and then there’s my blog.
(My blog and I have a bit of a rough relationship. If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you know that my blog and I are a struggling couple. We’re seeing it through, but it’s not easy.)
I am coming to terms with my desire to write. Like, to really write. I’ve always wanted to be a writer but recently, all of my life dreams have sort of combined and then spontaneously imploded within each other – I know they’re still there, somewhere in the mess, – floating and twirling and vaguely tottering back and forth, the way dreams do – but the difficulty lies in articulating them and then practically pursuing them.
Do you know what I mean?
So, although I’ve already articulated my desire to write several times throughout my life, I was especially aware of it during the past week, and I was even feeling the faintest bit of irritation with myself for sitting in front of this wall (otherwise contemptuously known as writer’s block) for so long now. I’m so over sitting in front of this stupid wall.
I realized that I am a strange, tormented type of person – a person who can’t seem to stop thinking about her fears, her hopes, her failures and her successes. I am someone who cannot escape the trap of my mind, and yet – within that trap, there is a flood of words and art and beauty just waiting to escape. I know it. I know it because I am a writer. So many of us are tormented by ourselves. And sometimes, the torment simply comes from subtly refusing to acknowledge our utter need to write – to take part in something larger than ourselves, something uncontrollable, something scary, something beautiful except that we don’t know how it got so beautiful.
To some of you, this will sound like rambling.
To the artists – the writers, the painters, the potters, the photographers, the musicians…well, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
So, not only have I chosen to inwardly acknowledge this dream of mine, but I’m also facing the scary reality of admitting it out loud. Not just to my husband or my mom or my friend – but to all of you. Whoever you are.
I’m a writer.
And while we’re talking about dreams (or was that just me talking?), I have to say something else. There is a deeply-seeded desire within me to simplify. Not just by getting rid of junk or driving one car or only cooking from scratch. Yes, those things are a part of the bigger picture, but oh how my heart longs for a simple life. A little white farmhouse full of children. A garden. Some animals. An outdoor fire over which I cook all my summer meals. A clothesline full of billowing sheets and diapers and my husbands socks and dishrags. Widlflowers and strolls through the forest and picnics and oh, my heart just hurts for these things. Not because I am a young girl with impractical ideals, but because I cannot stomp these yearnings from my heart.
Perhaps it will come to be. Perhaps not. But I am looking for them – looking for my farmhouse, and my forest, and my clothesline – I’m watching for them in case they happen to be waiting for me to notice them.
I do not know what will come, but I am not going to use that as an excuse to quit searching for a home for my dreams.
My floating, twirling dreams.
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