Rusty, but trying

Back in the day, early mornings were my blogging time. In San Diego especially, I remember a stretch of years when an assortment of nurslings and toddlers woke at the crack of dawn, and I would put on Little Bear or Signing Time and perch the laptop on the arm of the sofa, writing a post while the baby nursed. Blogging was my daily habit in those days, and in our Virginia years, too, when I used it as a way to transition from the busy-homeschooling-mom part of my day to the writing-a-book-on-a-tight-deadline part. Writing about the kids helped me cross the bridge from mom mode to writer mode. When people asked me, back then, how I managed to blog on top of everything else, that was my answer: blogging was what helped me do everything else full-throttle.

Here in Portland, early mornings are time I’ve reserved for reading and writing poems—the poetry before screens practice I’ve written about elsewhere. And the rest of the day has been so full, full of family and work and walks and chorale. Blogging became a sporadic activity because it didn’t have that dedicated space it used to own. I tried evenings, as a wrap-up to the day, but my tired brain raised a protest. 😉 So I’m back to mornings—getting up a little earlier in order to keep my poetry time intact, and then, after Jane leaves for work and Wonderboy for school, while most of the other kids are still in bed (except Huck, early bird), with the caffeine beginning to kick in and, here in January, the sun rising behind the bare trees out my studio window, I’m giving myself half an hour to write a post.

I think I’m a little rusty! Posts may be choppy and chatty for a while, until I get back in the groove. If I’m pressed for time (sometimes the poetry practice runs away with me, and I mean to let it) or if I oversleep, my plan is just to dash out a quick did/saw list. That’s a journaling habit I’ve drawn from the inimitable Lynda Barry, who shares in her books Syllabus, What It Is, and Making Comics a “daily diary” practice she requires of all her students. You can get a peek at her framework in this Brain Pickings post, and here’s a video demo from Lynda’s own Tumblr. I tend to dash off a modified version in my notebook: a list of things I did each day, a list of things I saw (lots of crossover with gratitude lists here), and any memorable lines I’ve happened to overhear. The “done” list is especially important for keeping me grounded, because my to-do list is always so long and if I don’t keep a separate record of things I actually did in a day, I measure myself harshly. Of course the to-do list will always be long! But the done list is mighty long, too, and I have to see it in print* to internalize it. (*In cursive, technically.) 😉

Okay, the thing that always makes posts run past their allotted time slot is the looking stuff up and linking to it—the fun part, the show and tell! I have three minutes left here today, which isn’t enough time for fiddling with a new photo & adding tags & all that bloggity stuff. I’m going to enter a random keyword into my WordPress photo library and go with whatever it pulls up. There—I entered “sun,” and the pic at the top of this post is what grabbed me. That’s a photo taken on one of my walks last year. Sunflower season—not exactly relevant to January but I like it!

Must dash. Happy Wednesday, friends.