Thinking Ahead

My dear blogging friends, family and people across the internet and time (and space),

I have so much I want to say. Firstly, that wasn't REALLY our bedroom in our last vlog (guest bedroom downstairs). And I don't REALLY wear those Lanz pajamas (though I did buy them second hand because I wore them as a child and they're sentimental). And YES! The Lower Lights sold out all seven of their shows and I went to their opener the other night with my brothers and sisters and parents (plus a few nieces and nephews) and we danced and sang and made ourselves silly with merriment and so, NO I am not still mad at them for showing up in my house. Though, were you worried they were going to show up in my bathroom next?

Me too.

Also, I took your kind advice and rethought the Christmas tree and so now it stands all 7 feet covered head to toe in ornaments, garland, ribbons and bows. It's a lovely specimen. Brings loads of cheer. I can't wait for Christmas to be over so we can haul it out.

I am sorry if that was a rude way to end that paragraph.

I had this goal of getting all of December planned and perfected so by December 15th I could start thinking about January. And so, I am sitting in the Christmas season, dreaming about a new fresh year and shocked by how domestic I want to be in 2015. I have this fantasy of moving everything around in my house, painting, decorating, making every room comfortable and lovely. And it's captured a lot of my attention right now. Somehow I feel like I should apologize for this, but then again we all have our ways of coping through the winter.

This is mine.

And in the summer I want to grow big grassy bushes outside my front door and paint the door and trim to the house a vibrant color. I want to swim in pops of color and texture and vibrancy in 2015.

Oh but seriously I am getting ahead of myself.

I've been thinking about writing and blogging. I have this general anxiety about never, ever giving up writing and blogging even though I feel like my life is full of little children who need my presence near-constantly. And would you believe that this cherubic, blue-eyed curly blond-headed baby of mine is also growing in neediness? I seriously thought one more child wouldn't add much to the levels of concentration. But then I had this angel baby who, as it turns out, has a mad crush on me and hates to see me so much as leave the room.

I mean to say, I never, ever want to give up writing in this state that I am in right now because I really worry that if all the women in the space I am in gave up on recording and narrating their lives we will continue to have less and less of a voice on what this--this intense mothering--feels like. And sometimes I stay awake at nights trying to think of essayists or novelists or even screen writers who have captured this experience I am having daily but I can't think of many. The reason is, I believe, we give up on writing and let this lifestyle swallow us whole. AND I WILL NOT LET IT SWALLOW ME.

And this is my daily fight--to not be consumed.

Because there is art in what I am doing--raising kids, building community, navigating faith, being in a romantic relationship, failing at finances, succeeding in chaos, perpetually planning--but there has to be time to write it all down. There has to be time to make sense of it. To make art of it.

In 2015 I want to become a domestic-inspired writer and let writing be to my life as important as how I make my home or I craft my relationships.

And as always, I want to be simple.

This year I really mean it.


P.S. Speaking of writing, I have taken a new post as a permablogger at By Common Consent (a Mormon blog for thinkers, so to speak) and my first post about losing faith and finding it again was published last week, you can find it here called Happy Birthday.




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