Thursday, April 24, 2014

Writing for my soul...

How I miss writing.

I’m sitting in the kitchen while my two kindergarteners do a math worksheet thinking about how I miss it.

Macaroni and broccoli are boiling, so I have about 11 minutes to sit down and write a few words.

A couple of days ago I read an old entry on one of my favorite blogs (which happens to belong to one of my favorite people. She's kind of inspirational :) .) She wrote about how she grew up an avid reader and after college and grad school she fell out of the habit. (Check out the blog for more details about why.) http://leslieannjones.com/2010/07/21/confessions-of-a-former-reader/

I identified with Leslie Ann’s feelings, but in the area of writing. I am what you would call a voracious reader. I am always reading something. Recently, I’ve started to diversify the sort of reading I do. (I attribute this occurrence to a recent trip to Together 4 the Gospel, but that’s another story.)

Back to the point. While I’ve never backed away from reading, after graduating college, writing became a thing of the past.  As a child, a teen, and even a young adult, writing was kind of how I calmed my soul,  how I worked through my feelings, how I expressed myself…to God and to other people.

I would write short stories or poems and take them straightaway to my dad for his opinion. Every time our family went to Memphis to visit the grandparents, Grandaddy would ask me “What have you written lately. Are you still planning to be a writer when you grow up?” Don’t know if he ever knew how much his taking interest in my writing meant to me. I hope my dad knows.

I feel like writing is still in my soul, though it’s not something for which I’ve been able to carve out time in my crazy life.

Or maybe I’ve chosen to not make time for it.

My  super-husband constantly encourages me to write. My response is usually, “I have nothing to say,” or “there are so many wonderful things to read out there, who needs something mediocre?” Most of the time I really do feel that way.

So, I think I’ve come to the realization that I need to change my motivation for putting pen to paper. My motivation can’t be for other people to appreciate what I write. I need to do it for the reasons I did when I was a kid...

For my soul…