Decide what to be and go be it.

Every single song on my play list spoke to me at the gym this morning (yes, even the Eminen song that never fails to push me from a tra-la-la steady, light jog into run for your life, there's a giant freaking bear behind you!  You have no idea how much I need that motivation every. single. time. And yes, I get it from a white rapper who uses profanity.  We take it where we can get it).  And so I pushed myself a little harder, ran a little further, and as I worked on my breathing (so, so hard for me to master) I let my mind trip over the words blasting in my ears.

This has been swimming in my brain ever since: Decide what to be and go be it.





I want to write more, but instead, over the weekend we cleaned the house.  Fall cleaning, if you will.  We moved furniture and dusted and swept in places that hadn't seen a broom or a rag for months.  Words bubbled up in my brain as I was making beds and emptying the dishwasher and folding laundry.  And before I could put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) I was consumed with a 3 year old and trains and cars and the library and dinner and baths and bedtimes and church and we fell down tired into our beds every night; the weekend gone before I'd done something I want to do.  Doesn't that sound selfish?

I want to write more, so in the midst of my cleaning frenzy over the weekend, I decided to carve out a space that would be conducive to writing - somewhere that I would feel creative and comfortable and inspired.  I've thought for a while now about bringing my computer out to the Artist's Cottage because I love that space, and as we were shoving and organizing in the house on Saturday morning, I told Abby we were moving my desk out to the cottage. It works because Finn can be in here with me and occupied (paints, play dough, car mat, dump trucks, puzzles) without me wondering how many not-so-secret cereal snacks he's going to sneak out of the kitchen (the boy is a bottomless pit already!).

I want to write more, and I've thought about writing the story of Uriah and me, something for our kids and our grandkids to have before we both lose our marbles and rock quietly next to each other in a rest home, our stories locked up inside our minds.  Of course, that story is entirely interwoven with Abby and how we got her and the court-house-shit-show that ensued for years (I'm eternally grateful to a youth spent reading Nancy Drew; I consider her my mentor), and I'm still trying to decide how that all works, because the story - while it is Abby's - is also integral to Uriah and me and the family we've fought for and struggled with and created.  But it will get started...that story, I mean.  Because it, too, is bubbling inside my head, looking for a way to get out.

I want to write more, so initiative taken.  Space created.

Decide what to be and go be it.