On Giving Myself a Generous Fifteen Minutes

Oh Dear.

What a lonely spot this has been since my letter to Mr. Nelson.

Some of you I talk to.  Some of you write things that I read.  Some of you write nothing and I wish you would.  Some of you write things that I wish I read, but rarely sit down to steal the time from some other pressing thing.

And that's the crux of my life . . . not lately . . . just life - many pressing things.  Too many for me to feel truly content, too many for me to feel I am without purpose.  No shortage of purpose - I've got that queued up at my door knocking relentlessly, giving me a raised eyebrow and a tap on the wristwatch.

I am sifting through the many pressing things and feel to budget all the minutes of a day as I would the dollars of a paycheck and see what can be made of them when they are used with great deliberateness.  So, fifteen of those minutes will go to writing for you.  It's for you, for me, for Jonah who will look up jethrodesia and read lots of posts lots of times because he has finished all the books from the library in a week and is eager for more words to ingest.

I don't know what this blog is.  I have no theme, no constant, no real direction.  I avoid writing because I don't have time to compose.  My Mom sees it as a lack of information about her grandchildren.  I see it as a failure to tap something at the center of me that when tapped, makes me feel less anxious.  Writing that is.  When I write regularly I am fulfilling some basic need in me.  Should it be funny, should it be insightful, should it require me to cast off the little grasping fingers of the Ewan who is now trying to pry me away from the keyboard?

Matt says "Don't compose, just write for the record."  He knows a thing or two about "the record" having read so many journals in the church archives and keeping his own to rival that of Wilford Woodruff.

I don't write because of the guilt that comes when avoiding the tasks of running a household and educating our children.  But when I don't write anything, ever, all the mundane work of a woman is condemned to mundane forever.  If I write, then what was once mundane passes through the ringer of self analysis, reflection, the lens of humor, consideration on the cosmic nature of scrubbing the truly disgusting toilet in the bathroom upstairs.  Writing clothes my mundane in consequence.

I need to see something of consequence in my work.

So here is my fifteen minutes today.  If I remember, I will try it tomorrow.  If I do it the day after that you will begin to get a taste of my life - if you're interested . . . if you don't have too much laundry to do.

But this is not totally honest.  This is thirty minutes of today.  The wicked indulgence.