What's Next

The time is 11:42 am and I have been at the computer all morning.  First, finishing an article for the Catholic Anchor newspaper for which I am a "stringer."  Second, creating a new blog focused on the challenges of living and eating healthfully.  And now, resurrecting my promise to write daily--one I have kept poorly and for which I feel much shame for my negligence of what truly feeds my soul--and that is writing.

A wise and dear friend took me to breakfast last week and challenged me to think about my future, to consider how I would spend my time now that my years and years of childrearing are drawing to their eventual close.  While I will always be a mother to my five offspring, their dramatic need for me has lessened over time.  This year my oldest daughter will graduate from high school, and only Jordan, my 15-year old, will remain at home.  A few short months from obtaining her driver's license, she too will become less dependent.

As we talked about my roles as wife and mother, as a business owner (though my husband does most of the work) and a committed church volunteer, he asked how I met the "transitional" times in my life.  My response was that I adapted to specific demands by doing what was required of me, by doing my "duty" so to speak.  That ability to adapt and respond he perceived as a strength, but also a weakness in that as "response" it didn't require of me the three things that are necessary to achieve the dreams I initially claimed I did not have.  Those three things; discipline, focus and sacrifice are requisite to attaining goals I little realized I had--perhaps the nearly 30 years of motherhood have obscured them. 

I remember writing in a survey taken during the last weeks of high school (and returned to me at my 20th class reunion) that my three favorite things to do were writing, sewing and photography.  Little has changed, though what now clarifies for me is that writing is perhaps my preferred pursuit--a vocation, perhaps, with sewing (and many other creative pursuits) being my avocation.  Clarity now demands a response, and the response is to return to the discipline of regular writing, focusing on honing my skills as a writer and sacrificing the things in my life that whittle away time, distract me in fruitless pursuits and undermine my efforts.

Stay tuned for more!