A Writing Habit

To ease the swirling thoughts in my mind, I have always written in a journal, a habit begun when I was in the fifth grade.  Over the years, some of those journal thoughts became this blog, which I have loved.  Postings fell off in the last two years, at first because in the early days of the Covid quarantine (remember when we hoped to flatten the curve?) I began a hand-written Covid journal.  I closed out the Covid journals in June of 2021 but never quite returned to the blog. 

I think that’s because my journal was filled with growing anxiety about my relationship with T and though I could identify and acknowledge that truth there, I was still hiding it from the world.  I never wanted the blog to be dishonest and so it was mostly neglected in 2021 and 2022. 

Since our breakup, I’ve made an effort to return to the blog, cultivating ideas to write about and share in this place that I consider a digital record of my life since 2006, when the blog first began.  For me, writing is like any other habit worth having: it needs to be intentional.  

One way I’ve organized that intention is by setting up regular monthly things to write about.  Since the blog began, the “About Me” section has been updated monthly, a habit that helped me to identify a list of the things that made me happy.  When the habit began, I was combatting an excruciating depression by looking for small sources of happiness.  That monthly list has paid me dividends over the years and I credit it with helping me through a very dark patch.  Early on, I used the 1st of the month to write a monthly post about something growing in my yard.  Later, the last day of the month became a book review.  Cooking and gardening became regular, if not always monthly features; so did postings about my front porch.  In 2023, I’ve made a plan for other monthly posts: Monthly Nature, Style, Gratitude, and Cooking posts will join the first and last of the month regulars.  In this way, I set myself up with things to write about as I once again manage life as a singleton.  I am a creature of habits; I take pleasure in the ways they structure my days, months, and years.  I expect these new habits to provide a framework for me as I search for peace and gratitude in this next chapter of my life.

Hopelessly Behind, Again

Postings have been light of late because, as seems to be my pattern in the past year, I have gotten behind.  I feel sad when I get behind because this blog and the writings that fill it are a source for real happiness to me.  In the coming weeks, I will get half-completed posts to completion and then get them posted.    So please stay tuned, regular readers, updates are coming…..

Just Start Somewhere

This blog has fallen behind in the last few months and as 2021 is squarely in my sights, it’s time for me to get a plan about whether this project goes on a more official hiatus.  I love writing here and over the years, it’s been a place to store pictures; memories, both happy and sad; observations and thoughts; and the details of my world.  It’s a reflection of my story and organizing and planning posts has always provided me with happiness.

Falling behind in 2020 is practically the perfect reflection of this unthinkable year.  While I’ve made the call not to be angry with myself for falling behind, I’ve also realized that I need to make a decision for moving forward.  At first, my thought was that I would move forward while also filling in from behind.  I tried this approach in October and November and that turned out to be an undertaking that teaching during a pandemic could not sustain.

And so I am at a crossroads: will I pause this project or seek to resume it, with my posting flaws on full display?  Helping disorganized middle schoolers to take command of their work is a big part of my job these days and when a child finds herself buried under pile of half-finished assignments I always advise them to just start somewhere and then keep moving.  Doing nothing, I point out, is not working.  Making a start is at least something.

It’s good advice and so today I am taking my own advice to just find a start.  I may complete and fill in postings from earlier in the year; I may not.  I will try to write on a regular basis in the coming year.  I start anew as this unthinkable year comes to a close, aware that there is likely a metaphor in that alone.  I start with the the hope that on a daily basis I can find the time to turn the thoughts I have into posts that are a meaningful snapshot of my life.  

It’s a start.

Filling in the Gaps

I spent the last weekend of this crazy pandemic Summer filling in the gaps from my blog postings since August 11, the last time I had posted.  That I hadn’t posted since then wasn’t because I hadn’t been writing.  I had been writing in every spare moment I had.  

But, as expected of thoughts thrown down on a page in increasingly rare spare moments, there were trails of incomplete ideas everywhere.  I made those ideas a priority over the long weekend, cleaning them up and adding photos and generally feeling glad for the journal that feeds this blog, a register of the memories and stories of my life, my work, and my blessings.

Perpetually Behind

Lately, finding time to sit down and write has been rather a rare event.  It’s not as if I don’t have things to say.  I do.  I think it’s that the time I used to set aside to write and edit has been altered by my need to get schoolwork done in the mornings before I leave for school.

When I get home after the school day,  the day seem just as busy.  I try to get to the gym, look to start a load of laundry, or make supper, or some other chore that needs doing and before I know it, it’s 8 pm and I am tired and ready to put my feet up and rest on the sofa, tucked under a blanket with T by my side.  I vow to write the next day, but I don’t because the next day brings more of the busy that was the day before.  And so it goes and days turn into weeks and postings lag...

…and then here we are, with weeks between posts while the list of things I want to write about or need to finish writing stack up.  And then I am annoyed by myself (an emotion that never pays useful dividends) and more empty days on my blog pile up.  I write and post here for myself, a sort of public journal of my thoughts and emotions over the years.  I value readers and I am always happy to hear that someone has enjoyed something I’ve written.  But this blog started as a project for myself and that is what it remains.

When I don’t write, I feel like I am letting myself down.  I miss the time to process my thoughts.  And I need to find my way back to a few minutes of writing each day.  There is no more time to be found in the day but there is time that I can carve out.  I need to make it a priority as a way of looking after myself.  And so I plan to try just that.

Time

May is always the most hectic month of the school year.  JT’s baseball season is winding down and he’s preparing for final exams.  The days of the month are growing steadily longer with sunlight to greet even the earliest morning and we seem determined to fill each moment of light with an activity.  In my classes, the students are wound up with excitement about summer.  I embrace the busy chaos and put my all into it aware that summer break and relaxed days are just around the corner.  The year, around the corner took a little longer than usual to arrive.

Early June found me packing up and heading to Washington D.C. in the company of our 8th graders for their annual trip.  School closed on June 10.  We had graduation and final faculty meetings and then T, JT, and I packed up for a midwestern trip to see some ballgames and make some college visits (more on that later!).

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

All of this added up to some longer-than-usual stretches with no posting on my blog.  That was because I didn’t find the time to write.  I missed the time to write and reflect that a more regular posting schedule provides me.  In the midst of the chaos, I really could have used a reminder to sit down and record my thoughts, time that gives me strength in my daily existence.

Like time for a walk outside in my garden, time to write soothes my rough edges and makes the busy days seem less stressful.  I keep a file of reminders about each month in my year and this reminder about May and early June will come to the top of the list for next year: take time each day to write.

Post 2500!

When this blog first began in 2006, I thought of it as a place for me to store some of my musings, especially those of a political nature.  That first post was about politics and it’s notable that today I feel the same way about immigration as I did in 2006.  As my life changed in an unexpected way that year, the blog served additional purposes.  It became a sounding board for the experiences and feelings I had as my world was re-organized.   I have always been a journal writer but the blog was more than a series of journal entries.  After all, the Internet is a public forum and though I have engaged in my share of over-sharing, there actually is a boundary to the things I write here.  Over the years, a readership of sorts developed.  I say of sorts, because most of my first readers were friends and family.  Thanks to the glories of Google data mining, I know that my audience has  expanded.  Postings here are sometimes written with an eye toward that larger unknown readership, though at its heart Sassafras Mama is my blog and I write it to please myself.

Over the years, I’ve thought of this blog as a place to file away my view of the world and my place in it.  It’s a place to store my pictures and ideas.  It’s provided incentives to take on projects large and small and is a record of those projects.  I write about things both serious and everyday.  It’s a record of my son growing up and the life we built together when his other mother left.  It’s the story of the plants and gardens in my care.  It’s the story of my life changing in other ways, as well.  From falling in love with T to professional changes and my experience of aging and parenting, the blog is a repository of so much of my life in the past 9 years.

I mention all of this because today I’ve reached a milestone worth marking.  This is posting number 2500.  I like the fact that my writings and thoughts are stored at this place; a library of my thoughts.  I still write for myself with a hope that others might enjoy what I have to say.  I’ve never monetized because I like the collection of my thoughts and ideas to be pleasing to the viewer’s eye and I don’t want my musings to be re-shaped by the demands of the material world.

There will be a number 2501 posting soon enough, so I’m not announcing any huge changes for Sassafras Mama.  But I am pausing to think about the many blog postings that have filled my last 9 years and to say thank you to readers who stop in and spend time with me.  Your presence and participation here has made my life richer and I am grateful for that happiness.

Problem Solved

The new version of Blogger has been driving me batty since it launched a few weeks ago.  I do my writing for my blog in a Word document, often taking time to edit the slop I plan to share with the Internet (hard to believe, I know).  When I'm ready to put stuff on-line, I transfer the text from the document over to Blogger.

For more than three years, this has been a most satisfactory method.  Then some  smarty-pants techie at Blogger did some updates and it all went to hell.  Or so I thought.  Turns out there had also been an update to Microsoft Word such that when I did my cut-and-paste routine, it transferred some html coding information that messed with Blogger's mojo.  The upshot was that my blog font was screwy, spacing was a disaster, Blogger would often suggest that I had made a fatal! error!.  And I was cranky.

Then I discovered that other places where I do the cut-and-paste dance (e-mail; a teaching program called Moodle; who knew what else?) were also screwed up.

More crankiness.

In passing yesterday, I mentioned my troubles to the tech guy at my school.  And it was literally in passing...we were both busy and I mentioned it when P walked past me.  Within 20 minutes, he had diagnosed and fixed the problem.  The solution, for now, is to do my writing in TextEdit, a program that is already on my computer (an Apple MacBook).  It's a solution worth sharing, and so I am doing so.

I have to confess that I already had great fondness for P, the tech guy at my school.  He's funny and quick-witted, two traits I always enjoy in a person.  He always takes my problems seriously, even when they are lame, self-induced wounds (and it's none of your business how much that happens)  And he always fixes stuff for me. 

And now I have yet another reason to be nice to him.  Thanks, P.