I’ve been so busy with love and life and parenting and career and houses and moving and running and life for so long and now here I am, settled, and it’s damn scary because I could write. It’s so quiet and I have time and space and ideas and money and even a god damn office and that means I have no excuse not to write and that makes me want to just go watch Friends on Netflix and fold laundry because there is so much laundry to fold that it would give me an excuse not to try to achieve what I hope to and quite possibly fail at it.

Opening and running a business for five years; homeschooling; dating and heartbreaks; building communities; learning to garden; learning to can; keeping myself just so busy all the time really did well to keep me from writing. I never had time to write!

I’m making time now. I’m making space. And when I sit down and the house is quiet aside from my writing playlist and I have the papasan chair to myself and the dishes are even done (!!) and I have this list of blog post and story ideas I’ve been brainstorming right here beside me, the blank screen looks back at me and frankly, it’s terrifying.

This is that hard part they were talking about, isn’t it?

I introduce to you my new blog category, “Things I Did Today Instead of Writing.”

Yeah so I’m just going to say, I don’t mean for this to glorify procrastination or avoidance. I’m actually hoping that by drawing attention (largely my own) to the ways I avoid writing will make me more conscious of my hang-ups and my avoidance methods and force me to face and work through them.

Also I hope someone will get a laugh at them or at least be able to nod in commiseration.