Under Pressure

Okay.

Here's the deal.

Wait! First you have to start that song at the top. It's awesome. You'll love it. It makes my post lighter and at the same time more dramatic. It's awesome! Do it for me. For funsies. ;)

I have started the same, or a variation of the same, blog post about 6 times now.

I sat down at the computer over an hour ago to try yet again. This time with the intent of it being short and sweet. (Because yesterday I tried for profound and well-thought-out and gave up at about 45 minutes - 3 paragraphs in.) Just a snippet, but enough to satisfy what I wanted to say. For kicks, I decided to just put an "*" every time I was interrupted while writing. I got about 5 incredibly disjointed paragraphs done before one of the kids was crying and bleeding and more than anything needing a shoulder and some loving words for her little sad heart.

Not something fixed quickly.

Twenty minutes, cat's claws clipped, and the reassurance that "no, the kitty doesn't hate you" later . . . I came back.

A tally and a word count: 380 words, 10 *'s. In 45 minutes!!!

I couldn't even fathom finishing (let alone liking what I'd written), because at this point I'm completely derailed.

I want to write. I love to write. I need to write.

But guess what?

This is the best I got. That's all folks!

My stimulus meter has reached the red zone.

I find that I am able to let off pressure by rolling with the chaos, working, and then finding something else to focus on. But I feel that any time I open up my brain to actually extract anything two things happen

A) mental overflow starts spilling out and I am unable to coherently filter through it all and

B) it opens the door wide enough for all the external stimuli to rush in and start crashing all around.

It's a mess, I tell you!

Even now, in an effort to subdue a little of the distraction, I turned on a movie for the girls on the laptop. I am an expert at tuning out Little Einsteins, My Little Pony, Blue's Clues, and just about any Disney movie. But instead of just watching it all regular-like, my kids have recently learned how - with the push of one button - to increase the playback speed on the DVD so that suddenly it's playing at triple-chipmunk-speed and my tune-out threshold is blown through the roof.

So I've made a decision.

I'm not going to stop trying, but I am going to give you an explanation and a warning.

1.   If you read through a post and it feels really boring and disconnected, give me props for being able to form sentences. It's harder than it seems.

2.   If everything feels overly emotional, I probably wrote it at about 11:00 or later. Our lives are actually very happy. Sometimes it just overflows . . . it's not what I really meant to write, but it's probably late and I can't think of any other way to say it. Everything is more dramatic at nighttime. I tell ya, the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be!

3.    If I publish a post that ends mid-paragraph or mid-thought, makes little sense, sounds overly judgmental, and a little depressed, IT'S BECAUSE I GAVE UP. Read between the lines and guess that I'd probably been working on it for the past 2 hours and finally just threw in the towel. I didn't want to have absolutely nothing to show for the time I'd spent --- so I settled for half of a nothing.

Now, a caveat.

I LOVE MY LIFE.

I LOVE MY KIDS.

I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR ANYTHING IN THE WORLD.

And all too soon, it will change. The demands on my time will change. And I'll be more than a little sad about that.

Who knows if I'll ever have more time, but I'm hoping that one day my brain will again find the capacity to form whole thoughts that are sturdy enough to make the long journey from my head to my fingertips without jumping ship.

I dream that one day I'll be able to open up my brain and not have it feel like the closet of a hoarder.

Until then, just bear with me, huh?