The insecure blogger and her train of thought

The posts that write themselves, in a flourish of creativity where fingers pound the keyboard like they have a mind of their own, are the best. I'm often confident about them in a way that escapes me most of the time.

On the other hand, if I'm driving or taking a shower or making lunch for my boys and an idea strikes me, it rattles around in my mind and heart for too long. So when I sit down to reign it in, I'm lost, often pulling thoughts from a hundred light bulb moments that don't add up. I'm editing and editing and second-guessing and insecure. I work and work here and there, and still feel I come up short.

There needs to be a freedom in this, a gut level honesty of the moment, a kind of escape. That's when the words reach out to other hearts and shake hands in agreement.

It's rarely a reality, that a person (sorry guys, but especially a mother) has the time for the kind of writing that they dream of, the kind that demands hours. If I finish one more thing, answer to three more demands and succumb to the volume of my home, all while trying not to let the aha thoughts slip away, something is lost.

Is it strange that this makes me sad?

I long for blocks of time to visit spaces, books and posts that bring me inspiration and then allow my reactions and feelings and thoughts to flow across the keyboard. But that time is not now and sometimes I grieve that. I then resent what is holding me back and then of course I feel guilty for the resentment. I think of Charrette's tag line, my children are not obstacles in my path, they ARE my path. And so often they ARE the inspiration for my heart's words, while they unintentionally create a dam to them.

The second part of that tag line is - Oh, but then there are all those other delightful paths.

This is why so many mothers often waffle between near constant attention to writing and reading (we bloggers, anyway) and then guilty angst that leaves us thinking of quitting completely, at least until...someday.

Then we feel like a hateful martyr and we kick ourselves for wanting anything other than this gift of time with our children. We also know time away is healthy, but it's also terribly unreachable almost always. We steal ten minutes here, thirty seconds there and sometimes even two full hours in a coffee shop. But it doesn't feel like enough, and so begin the thoughts - the fantasizing of time off, whether we work at home or not, and we once again come up against walls, no options for the kind of help we need, no money for the kind of help we need. So our time, like a line of books with no bookends leans and falls flat. Again.

That's me anyway. The irony is that I'm secretly relieved when I realize it won't work out. There will be no large blocks of time that beg me to give my all, to set down my insecurities and truly write. No pressure. I love no pressure. So I throw out what I can here and there, into the universe, and watch it float for a while, sometimes gobbled and praised and sometimes misunderstood and simply gazed. Either way, what I have to give always disappears into the archives with a shhhhh. That's how it seems to me, in my ruminating mind, my always questioning and comparing, hesitant to confidence, mind.

I did a little Twitter poll on the subject of blogging zen. Do you have it, I asked. Do you hit publish and feel nothing but good about what you wrote? Even before that first comment comes in that assures you that you were understood?

Almost everyone said no. And if they said yes, they followed that with rarely.

We humans are such an insecure bunch, aren't we? At our core, we're always wondering...Does my voice count? Here is my heart in words, now don't stomp on it, please. And since many a blogger wants to write beyond blogging, that can be hard. People pleasing rears it's ugly head nearly every time.

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The last part of Charrette's tag line says - Fortunately - eventually - all roads lead to Home.

I find comfort in that. I'll certainly have more time in my future, and I hope that time is met with more confidence in both my mothering and my writing.

Perhaps the writing time I long for now is elusive and slippery because I'm not ready for it.

I can't imagine a better place for stretching and warming up than here in my home with these boys, and here in this space, with you.

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Just so you know, I just did exactly what my very own tag line says - I wrote to find out what I'm thinking. I answered the following questions of myself- Why the blogging angst? Why am I not confident in my writing? And I found out I'm practicing, and somehow, that makes me care less about people pleasing in this space and in my life. Seems so obvious, but sometimes a girl's gotta blog to find out what she already knows.