30 in 30 # 2

In January I wrote 30 blog posts in 30 days with the intention that some of the pieces may end up being rough drafts of possible pieces I could work with later, but I didn’t think about this while I wrote. I had just started reading Natalie Goldberg’s book, “Old Friend From Far Away, The Practice of Writing Memoir” so I followed the exercises day by day, following my writing wherever it went even if it wasn’t the path Natalie seemed to be asking us to take (really I can’t imagine her expecting writing to stay with the teachers suggestion). The suggestion is merely a starting point.
Since I found OS a week and a half ago I’ve been eating, breathing and dreaming in words to write. I have always loved writing. I have always written whenever I have time and mind to. When I was younger this looked like a young girl, later a woman, hunched over a cafe table or curled up on her couch writing as fast as she could get her racing thoughts on paper. Then I got married and had 2 children. Children take time and energy to care for. In the early years my hands were the busiest, holding, nursing, changing a diaper, reading to my sons or singing familiar tunes with hand motions. I told myself, as days, weeks, months and years went by that I was collecting life that would one day fill pages of notebooks. I told myself to stay present because these days were precious and I would miss them if I didn’t pay attention. I told myself to pay attention so I could later recreate on paper some of the insights, mundane and momentous moments and learning that so completely filled my days. So I payed attention to my world, inside and out. Often it was frustrating, more often I was happy, immersed in a sea of innocent love form 2 large eyed boys that had each emerged from my body not so long ago and a family life continually being created with the man I chose to marry.
Now these boys are 6 and 10. My hands are free. So in January, when a fellow artist, a friend who creates/channels watercolors that speak silently so intense are they, announced she’d challenged herself to create 30 watercolors in 30 days and invited others to take on a similar challenge with their art, I was in. First I announced my intention in my other blog, linked all facebook friends to it, then I wrote. I had no idea if it was realistic for me to complete this project or not. Day 1, I opened Natalie’s book on memoirs, read the first exercise, let my mind get quiet, looked at what words and images came into my thoughts and started writing it down. In this way I got most of the way through the 30 in 30. Towards the end I chose a few topics of my own. With each piece, I’d post a status update to facebook. The response was kind but I told myself I had to write even if no one ever commented. I finished the 30 posts in 30 days.
Today, I’ve been frustrated. I can tell my writing is forced, a reflection of the difficulty I have feeling serene in a disordered house. Because I have a family and we home school, I can’t expect the house to be neat, clean and orderly all the time, especially until we really finish this third major purge and get down to just what we need and what helps us to thrive (not much when all is said and done). When I was single, I could only write at home once I’d put everything away, dusted and spent a few minutes sitting in the quiet. This kind of preparation is only rarely available to me at this time, but the desire, the driving need to write right now is not letting up, not waiting for me to be in my fairy land of outer serenity.
I went on a 5 minute bike ride tonight to clear my head and move my blood. Out there in the dusk of late summer I realized what I need to do next. I need to get back to basics. When I got home, I pulled Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind off the shelf, opened to the first line and read,