On possibility

I currently have six ill formed blogposts waiting on me in my drafts.

Six.

S I X.

So I obviously started a seventh, and here we are.

Those six posts are all on BIG THINGS. Marriage. Motherhood. Patriarchy. Love. Wanderlust. A scrambled mess of all the thoughts and all the feelings. A deep, thick swamp of what I'm working through on a day to day basis, trying to connect it to a bigger picture. To other stories and other lives. It's like walking from my sludge into someone elses, leaving big brown footprints in between. Immersing myself until I need to haul myself out, looking like some kind of swamp monster, then needing to shower and wash it away. Stripped back until I'm squeaky clean, before I can go wading back in all over again.

That's a pretty good metaphor for my mind right now. Add in the swamp monster continually driving around a roundabout at some point, and I think we've nailed it.

I want to get this stuff out. To talk it all over, put it down, share and be shared with in return. Desperately at times. I think it's interesting guys. I think you'd like it. I think it's worthy of conversation, and dumping it out here would feel like heaven. There are pages and pages of words. If only my brain could coherently arrange and edit and spellcheck, and I had built in wifi so I could upload it by merely blinking. The dream!

The reality? I just. can't. do. it. I can't get far enough into any of it. I keep bashing up against a brick wall, so then I start again. On a another topic. Another thread. Another tangent. And in a big way I feel like it's just a very accurate reflection of my inner workings right now. A lot of solo parenting, a lot of contemplation, a lot of reading and taking on other points of view has left me confused. Messy. Overwhelmed. A swamp brain filled with all the stuff.

There are also other reasons it's not working. Some are totally legit, and some... not so much. Shall I list my excuses for you?

• I have children. This feels less of a legitimate reason every time I trot it out.
• I'm not making the time. I could be getting up early in the morning like a good, organized creative person does. Do I? hahahahaha no. I do not.
• I've lost my creative mojo. The ideas are there, but getting past that first hurdle seems impossible. I feel a bit lost, creatively.
• It's hard and requires concentration. I'm not pushing through the uncomfortableness. I'm basically a toddler wailing on the floor at the difficulty of it all, waiting for someone to save me from myself.
• Something else is calling me. That book. This website. Those kids. The bloody dishwasher. All the other things are calling me, it seems.
• I'm not good enough. I wish I was a better writer. Coherent. Concise. No typos. That the words would come and feel like me.

Maybe that last one is the real crux of this story. If I felt good enough at it, good at all, would that make those other excuses easier to kill off? Is it hard because I'm not good enough, or am I not good enough because I'm not trying very hard? I suspect it's a combination of the two.

If that's the case, there is hope.

Finding your own voice in writing is fucking hard, right? It's not easy for anyone, and that's why (as with many endeavors in life) not everyone does it. So often I can't see myself clearly enough in what I'm writing. I can't see the nuance, or humour. Or the playfulness that can fly out of my mouth but feels so much clunkier and awkward in written form. I just can't see me, I guess.

Obviously the only real way to find my voice, to see myself here in these words, is to come the fuck on, Bridget. Write more. More and more and more until out comes me in that sentence, that phrasing, that paragraph, that whole piece. There I am and down I spill. Practice practice practice. To put in the hours. Deliberate practice and blood, sweat and tears.

Really, none of it matters. Or at least, it only matters to me. I only want to be better for me. To know that I can translate these thoughts into something that can exist outside of myself. Worked through and sorted, filed into an imaginary cabinet labelled 'Shit Laura thought about' (new blog name?) I mean really,  is there even any point? I don't know. But I do know that sometimes, I like it. This feeling of 'stuckness'. Of challenge. Of the possibility at becoming better at something. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but it's possible. And sometimes it's just really fucking irritating.

Oh hi, life.