I want to set a timer to see how often I am interrupted in any given moment. Alexa, restart stopwatch please.
If I am in the kitchen doing the dishes, voices call for me to help them with something. "I have wet hands," I say. "I'm trying to do the dishes." But they hold up the toy for me to fix or the hair for me to do or the paper to look at and their big blue eyes gaze at me like why are you not helping right now?
If I sit down on the couch to read while they are happily playing, I barely get through a page or two before they pile on me, jostling and shoving for my lap, my space. "Want to get your own book and read next to Mommy?" I ask. "No, I want to cuddle you!" my four-year-old flips and wiggles and puts his feet in my face.
Bedtime is a farce. Of course they are in bed by eight, teeth brushed, books read. But really, really, I mean really, we all know they don't stay there. Children who stay are mythical fairy creatures whose parents have cast magical spells on them. Mine are in the stairwell, calling down to me to report their every move. "Mommy, I forgot to floss!" "I just need to run downstairs and get a book." "I forgot to fill up my water bottle and I'm going to die of dehydration!"
We can't even talk about trying to take a shower or do anything remotely close to the restroom. Locked doors are a challenge to talk louder so that Mommy will answer. Or to see how many times they can wiggle the doorknob before I get frustrated and give in.
I once read somewhere that the brain needs twenty-eight minutes to refocus on a task once its been interrupted. Twenty-eight minutes! (I have no idea how true this is. I probably just made up this number. What I do remember is that it was a big number and I thought it meant I would never focus on anything again.)
What I'm trying to say is that I thought about blogging over the past few years. I even wrote a few snippets of things here and there, hoping to turn them into something more. But alas, social media broke out and people all of a sudden became professional photographers with cool filters and I've already accepted the fact that photography is not a talent of mine. At all. And probably never will be. Sorry, I don't have the pretty pictures to go with the words. Even if pictures are worth a thousand words. I'm keeping it simple, here.
A friend of mine recently suggested we make blogging cool again. The word "blogging" brought back memories of happily sitting at my laptop and typing for the sake of typing. Remember when I started this thing back when I was pregnant with child number one? She's ten now, just so you know. But back then it was a matter of putting the memories in print. Of not forgetting the experiences and being brutally, sometimes graphically honest about it. This is my blog and I can write what I want to write, editors be darned (although I am very thankful for editors. Without which I would not have had any of my words published on actual sites. Thank you, dear editors!).
So I'm going to reset my timer, be more intentional about sitting down and pounding out a few random words on these trusty old keys, and hope to grow my writing muscle. Who knows, maybe this will actually turn into something. In the meantime I'm joining the bandwagon to make blogging cool again.
