A New Call to Adventure: Writing, Life, and Love
It's been about five months since my last confession. That's a long time. I've been very busy, and I have not done much writing. Like at all. And I miss it. I've been struggling to figure out how to integrate writing back into my life. It's becoming this alien thing I do only sometimes now.
In reviewing a lot of my older blog posts, going back four years now (tiiiimmmme flies!), one overarching theme has emerged: my inability to commit to writing as a daily practice. That was yet another reason I started this blog, and it helped. For a while anyway.
Now most of my writing is for work. Emails. Work documents. Job descriptions. Budget justifications. Marketing pieces, which are kinda of interesting and at least entail a creative process. I also write a lot of texts (ugh), a couple social media outlets (Facebook and short Goodreads reviews) and one discussion board I regularly visit (nerd alert--about Star Wars stuff).
Actually, I've done a lot of good writing via text. I text my girlfriend a lot. We have these pretty deep text-talks, and through our writing to each other, through our dialogue, we explore and collaborate on some interesting ideas. It's good solid writing, better than I would have thought possible via a phone, much less texts. I'd be interested in exploring the collaborative, coauthored nature of text writing sometime. In ways, people are writing more than ever. In other ways, as an educator, text and social media writing is doing a very poor job teaching young people (and all people, really--this last election was a testament to that) how to write well. How to craft an argument. How to explore and evaluate ideas via writing, one of the best things about writing. But texting is its own medium. And people have been crying about how less prepared the youth of today are for just about everything since roughly forever. So I don't think texting is necessarily killing the radio store. All writing is good. Composition instructors can even use texting as a spring board to take young writers from the known to the unknown--critical thinking and crafting a sustained thought via writing.
So, yes, as I said I have a girlfriend now :)
She has started reading my blog too. I only recently showed it to her (recently being yesterday...lol). I didn't mean to not show her. The Life Line has faded for me as I have moved on to other phases in my life. It has been less...Life Line-y as it once was. I really needed it then. I named the blog well. It kept me afloat and helped me to work through...so much during a critical life transition.
She really likes my blog and the writing in it. So in addition to a new fanbase, lol...I also have a more real audience--someone I know, not just an anonymous horde I will never meet. You can't not consider your audience when you write. The anonymity of the blog was part of the appeal for me. Having an audience both provided me with a sort of motivation to keep writing, and the anonymity provided me with a safe haven to be more honest. But it was an audience nonetheless. And there were times I didn't post things after I had written them. I didn't want to expose some of the darker times. The periods I sank into a depressive funk. I wanted to sustain the illusion of getting better. And this illusion helped to actually create a better reality. The Life Line became as much of a persona as anything.
I may repost some of those more depressing posts someday.
So her presence as a reader of this blog changes the blog. But that is fitting. Having her in my life changes who I am. Changes how I live my life. I have had to learn how to let someone in. That has not been easy for me. Yet, at the same time, it has been crucial. She has become my new Life Line, more than she realizes.
This time, where I am now, how far I have come, felt like it was so far away. That depressive, post-marriage reality is now just a blip in my past. But it also really was a significant, new call to adventure that was the start of a whole new hero's quest, a whole new life. It is quite amazing how that pattern, the Monmouth, really does play out.
But the then of that time felt so...permanent. It was an exercise in despair, loss, and grief. It was pretty intense, and I did not know what to do. I did not know who I was. So much had felt like it had gone wrong. And I felt so...alone. Save for my work and my beautiful boys. Both of those things also saved me. I put all my focus into them at the expense of everything else.
It was overwhelming. It was scary. But I persisted. I wrote. I got up everyday. I kissed my sons. I worked hard. I excelled. Despite of or because of the situation. I'm not certain which.
Around this time last year, I moved into my new home. The second one I now own. I bought that first home to repair my credit, build up equity, and get a better home. A gamble, but also intentioanlly planned. I never would have thought I'd have two houses then. I have a really great job managing a very large academic program. I didn't see that coming so quickly then either. Managing a program is stressful. But I love it at the same time. I have been putting a lot of myself into that now. Molding the program more into where I think it needs to be. It's like a living thing. New obstacles and transitions all the time. And so many people, so much stuff and money I'm responsible for. That can feel overwhelming too. But you just keep at it every day, and you keep going and going and going. And things get better.
Results and outcomes improve. You can look back and see the results. It's very rewarding.
The Life Line allows me to look back and see where I was then, who I was then. Because we don't always see the change as it's happening. But the cumulative effects of the gradual changes can result in waking up one day and realizing, shit, things are so different. So better.
I have found a new equilibrium. I am so much better than I would have imagined four years ago. My boys are doing so great in school. If I think about how well they are doing, I am completely capable of crying. They are such smart little people now. And they were barely more than babies then. My ex and I have found a niche in which we are able to communicate and work together to coparent our children. We are semi-friends now even. It's nice, in a way, to have her back in my life as kind of friend. It can also be maddening at times. But it's good.
And I've found love again. I honestly thought that was something that was in the past for me. Something that I had experienced but never would again. And after losing love and then re-finding it, it is all the more precious. It's another new call. Another great identity defining adventure. We are carving out a new identity together. We have no idea where it's going. I am just enjoying having her in my life.
So how do I juggle it all? Work, parenting, writing, my home, my health, and love. There are no instructions to follow. We make it up as we go.
It's a story we continually craft. So why not chose to love your story? Believe in it. Keep revising it. But also just live it. Like a story or any piece of writing, let it guide you where it will. That is the best part of writing. How it creates things and takes you to places you didn't know you were going to.
I didn't meticulously plan out this blog post. I just decided I was going to blog again today.
And so I sat down with my coffee and started writing.