New Deal

I have to complete one project today.  It's my new deal.  This week, I am going to start something creative and finish it, every day.

I've got loose ends flying around all over the place.  I have all of these good intentions to be amazing, but then Louise asks if they can watch Yo Gabba Gabba and it's so easy and comfortable when they're sitting there with a bowl of snacks.  I kind of inch backward until I'm out of their sight so that I can do dishes or read a few pages of something I can't get into or balance our budget. 

I feel like I should get dressed, but we end up playing upstairs and I kind of lay on the edge of my bed while they bounce, and it just feels so easy and soft.

I decide that we should go on an adventure, but then they just play so nicely in Scouty's room together, and everything is still and so I halfheartedly put away some laundry and quietly die from the sameness of everything.


I believe the thing that people are always saying about how YOU get to decide who you are.  It's not easy, realizing you're powerful and then wielding that power, but I believe it's an option.  I think it's especially hard for some people who have trouble focusing on things for very long, people like me.  Do you know how many "new deals" I've had in my lifetime?  About a million.  I get all wobbly and feathery like a ribbon with a fraying end.  I mean to live with purpose, and then the wind shifts and I end up wrapped around a light pole with my mesh coming undone, just wiggling aimlessly in the wind.

So, I make little goals.  Like today, I'm going to start something creative and finish it.  I want to write, every day.  I want to finish a book.  I'm just very far away from structure and control, right now.  I'm just very scraped across the rocks.  My baby is almost two years old and I am finding that I have little bits of time and energy to put towards something.  I have to start slowly, though, because there's no way I will be able to jump from being harried and invisible and too tired to think, a mom of a baby and toddler... to a person who can keep a schedule and has personal goals and the time and energy to realize them.

When I wrote my first book, I started when Scouty turned two.  I can feel it coming up on me, a time where I look around and realize that every day isn't so hard, the way it is when you're a NEW MOM of two.  I'm a mom of two, and I've had a few years to get used to it.  I guess I'm not there, just yet, but I feel it coming.  If I keep taking baby steps, pretty soon, I'll have an exercise schedule, we'll have a pantry full of groceries at all times, everybody will get dressed in actual clothes every day, I'll be able to make things with my hands, I'll write back to people and spend time with people and keep up with them,  I'll be able to get away in the evenings to write.  I'll feel like a person, if I take it slow, maybe I'll even remember what it feels like to not be too tired and stressed out to want to have sex.  (Maybe.  We'll see.)

That's why I make new deals.  Today, I just have to get something done.  Well, and I have to get showered and dressed.  Wish me luck.