Writing

Yesterday I slammed my finger into a file cabinet drawer, the old school metal kind with the satisfying click when the drawer closes. The click isn’t so satisfying when the tender skin of your finger is caught directly on the pointed metal corner. A blood blister formed almost immediately, though nothing bled through the skin.

When I got home, I put a band aid around my finger, more as a mental barrier than a physical one. I didn’t really need the reminder. As I stood in the kitchen making lunch, I checked the oven three times to make sure it wasn’t on. The throbbing heat of the blister felt like I was too close to a source of heat. I pulled off the band aid and ran my finger under ice cold water, held it against a bag of frozen vegetables until I got bored.

It hurt the rest of the night, turning darker and darker purple. I fell asleep on the couch for a bit, waking to a darker sky, a reminder we still aren’t through the gloom of winter, not even close. It hurt, and I felt silly for letting it bother me. It hurt, and I felt irritated for feeling silly. It hurt.

I’ll never make it through a zombie apocalypse, apparently, if this tiny thing became a big thing — and injury that didn’t even bleed. The biggest actual effect seems to be that I can’t take off my chipped nail polish, so I’m attempting to cover it with another coat. It might work to fool people from afar, but I can see the chips when I look down at my fingers.

My finger feels better today, the long purple slash fading to maroon, the pulsing heat cooled to whatever temperature fingers should be.

I had a point when I sat down to write this, and I lost it along the way. Maybe it had to do with the healing power of time. Maybe it had to do with giving myself a pass on being tough. Maybe it had to do with how much something can hurt, even below the surface.

My idea, whatever it was, faded more quickly than the blood is absorbing back into my body, and that, at least reminded me of a tangible thing I used to do. I used to always have a notebook, jotting ideas, words, or lines I wanted to use in the future. I didn’t always reference it, or when I did, some of the scribbles felt less important than they had when I wrote them. Either way, I carried a notebook, and I think it’s time to start carrying it again.

I read something online that their 2024 would be “starting on February 1, because January was a trial month,” (paraphrased). I know I definitely saw a similar sentiment for 2023 and probably for years before that, because

January is a long month with stumbles, big and small, over resolutions. Snow piles make parking difficult, and the kids had their midterms postponed and then postponed again due more to “cold days” than the snow itself. Truthfully, the worst driving days were spent carefully plowing through the neighborhood to their schools, and each time we received the “no school tomorrow” call, I felt grateful not to be the one making decisions.

Bitter cold, snow, Lions football games, the inability to remember how sun looks or feels. All of those things contribute to a lack of motivation.

It wasn’t all bad.

Dylan turned fourteen. Maybe it’s his January birthday, but he loves the cold and snow, and happily uses his school’s ski club to hang out with friends outside on Friday nights. I tried to work out more. I tried to eat for fuel and not feelings, though that’s a constant struggle for me. I didn’t drink at all between the cruise and our date night to see Wicked, though I wanted to say I feel more rested but truly haven’t noticed a difference. We saw Wicked.

I sat down the other day to plan out February, to set goals and think about which habits to track and which I could let slide. We have 29 days in February this year, perfect for my little Aquarius, who can’t wait to turn sixteen near the middle of the month.

After the frustrations and lethargy of a gloomy January, I’m trying to keep February simple.

Move my body. Daily.

Write some words. Daily.

Read some words. Daily.

I hope those seemingly small steps add up to a more centered month, one where I don’t feel too guilty for nachos, one where those little things get purposefully in the way of endless internet scrolling. I’m interested to see where this Leap Month takes me.

On January 1, we were floating somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, or possibly the Atlantic Ocean. My geography is terrible, but that’s not exactly the point. We were on vacation, so I decided to begin my resolutions “after vacation.” Then we drove home for basically two solid days, so I lived on gummy bears and other road trip fare and decided to wait until I got home to set goals and get started. Dylan’s birthday is the sixth, and we focused on that and getting the house back in order, then, then, then.

There’s always a then.

I know the first of the year is an arbitrary date and not a true clean slate. I can clean my slate whenever I want. I can set goals, begin new routines, buy a notebook that may just change the world, and I can do those things on whatever day I want, even in the middle of the day and not just at 4:45 a.m. when I wake up for my first workout of a new routine. Yet there’s something magical about those “new beginning” dates: the first of the year, my birthday, the beginning of the school year.

This one is slipping through my fingers.

I have’t done nothing. I’ve truly pondered what I want things to look like this year. I’ve made conscious decisions about where I need to hone focus and what things I might be able to let slide just a bit. I’ve journaled and planned ahead, and set some small-but-measurable goals. I’ve even met a few of them. (Hello, Water, nice to become reacquainted.) Still, I feel a little stuck in some sort of limbo. It doesn’t help that our mild winter suddenly decided to remember we’re in Michigan, resulting in two snow days right after our MLK Jr. break.

All of this is to say I’m basically overplanning myself into doing not much of anything at all. I see myself falling into a trap I set for myself all the time, which is the one where the stars must align for a “serious start” that will be the beginning of something beautiful.

The truth is, I’m already in the middle of something beautiful. Of course, that thing, my life, is also sometimes terrifying and sometimes overwhelming and sometimes hilarious and sometimes plain, old mundane. The key, if I’m being honest with myself — and I’m trying to be honest — is starting.

I used to think I had no problem starting things. I liked the shiny promise of a new story, a new planner, a new beginning. The starting felt fun and adrenaline-filled and like something I could unwrap with pride. So many of those starts petered out. Those stalls, stops, implosions, whatever you might want to call them, all lurk in the back of my head. It’s scary. No, I’m scared, literally, to start again when I might not be able to bring yet another fresh start to fruition.

So instead I’ve been planning and using big markers instead of fine tipped pens, and I’ve been tip-toeing around writing or blogging or sending out a newsletter or any of those other things I said I’d do in the new year.

Today, I decided to just show up. Just sit down. Just write. Just press “post” even though it’s not perfect and not what I planned and doesn’t have nearly any of the polish or any of the answers or any of the milestones I hoped to have by the middle of the month.

Show up. Sit down. Write.

I’m trying to be better about not wasting time. I struggle with this regularly, because it’s an avoidance mechanism I fall into when I’m overwhelmed. I spent so much time last year feeling overwhelmed, that I expected this year to be a breeze by comparison. What everyone knows is that time fills, whether it’s with positive or negative things, wants or requirements, and the feeling of being overwhelmed is internal as much as external.

That’s a long way of saying I’m trying to block time in my schedule for things and also track time using an app, and I’m not sure that’s the way to go. (Writing out loud here) I like the blocking, visually, though I don’t always stick to it, though I think I’m getting better. It’s also a way to visually identify when I’ll need help driving or when there’s not a chance in Hades we’ll be able to eat anything close to dinner together.

The app is what I’m unsure about right now. I liked the idea when I started it. Obviously, or I wouldn’t have tried it at all. I set up categories for writing, editing, blogging, journalling. But honestly, with work and being a mom (aka driver) and all the random things in my life, my writing time on good days hasn’t approached more than an hour in a long time. I’m aware of that, and working that number higher is part of why I wanted to track time this fall. However, it’s disheartening to read, “you focused for 48 minutes today,” when you’re exhausted and feel like you’ve gotten pretty much everything on your to-do list accomplished.

I considered tracking other things just to up that number. Workouts. Meditation. Appointments and errands for my mom.

That feels a little like cheating, because most of those things can be done on autopilot. They’re not really focused activities. (Ok, maybe the meditation.)

I guess I’m writing to think today, because I’m starting to see that maybe 48 minutes of focused writing is better than zero minutes or six minutes or eleven minutes. Maybe instead of feeling bad about that small section of time, I should use it as a reminder that I’m finding time at all, something I couldn’t even pretend to do last fall when my mom was newly diagnosed and I couldn’t focus on a THOUGHT for eleven minutes, let alone a journal entry.

I will stick with it for now, 48 minutes at a time.