“Life is an endless process of self-discovery.”

-John Gardner, American Writer

Every morning, after I carefully extract myself from in between Oliver and Lucy,who now come into our bed in the middle of the night, every night; after I turn on the light in the kitchen and pour my coffee that was programmed to brew at 5:45 am; after Dharma comes down the stairs to join me as I walk outside into the early morning darkness toward my Treehouse; after I light candles on my windowsills and settle onto the couch with my journal, I write.

I write about the morning, or how I feel, or what Oliver or Lucy did the day before.  I write lists of the crap I need to do, lists of the stuff that otherwise wreaks havoc on my presence of mind.  I write about things that are going great and things that suck.  I write about what I want to do and what I wish I would have done.  I write about being stuck, about PMS, about my bad habits, and about how I plan to overcome them.

As the sun rises over our snow-covered neighborhood, I lose myself as I come back to myself in the pages of my journal.

And if I don’t write, I get very, very discomboulated and crabby.  I am not alone:

“To me…writing is addictive.  If I don’t get to write three or four times a week, I start getting very angry with people, very annoyed.”

-Laurence Yep

Needless to say, Paul supports my morning ritual with zeal and vigor.

So, in Part One of a Series of Some, let’s explore the question of Why Write?

Reason #1: We write to ground ourselves.

Life seems to me, especially as I get older, to be moving at such an unfortunately rapid speed, if I don’t make space and take time to check in with myself, I feel like I’m caught up in tidal wave where I cannot seem to get my footing, where I seem to always be catching up, where I live as a reaction rather than an intention.

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”  -Joan Didion

But in those blessed moments, when it is me, my pen, and a blank page in my journal, I feel as though I have the power to stop the flow of time, to zoom in and look closely at what I’m doing and why.  It’s a way to pin my thoughts down, to unravel the ball of confusion in my head, and to create balance.

In honoring this gift of life we are given, we must take time to breathe, release our ruminations, and fill our wells with new insight from refection. Writing is a powerful and magical way of doing so.

“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.”
-Christina Baldwin, writer

If you are compelled to read this far, I am assuming some part of you is compelled to write.  So why are you compelled?  Why do you want to write?

Yesterday I was not the mother I aspire to be.  I was short-fused, impatient, preoccupied, loud, stressed, dissatisfied, ungrateful, and mad at myself for all of the above.  I tried and tried to bring it around, to find my center knowing that I was doing a great job of teaching Oliver and Lucy how to be short-fused, impatient, preoccupied, loud, stressed dissatisfied, and ungrateful.

It started at 6:00 a.m. when I woke up. In the dark of the morning, under a purple black sky, with my coffee in hand, I walked outside to the Treehouse, opened my computer, and began writing.  I hated every word I wrote.  For three hours, I wrote a few paragraphs, highlighted them, and clicked “delete.”  Over and over, I repeated this pattern.

Instead of viewing my writing time yesterday as three hours of writing practice, I chose to interpret it as total failure and wasted time.  As I left the Treehouse a few hours later, I heaved a heavy psychological backpack onto my back stuffed with self-dissatisfaction and writer’s despair.

I lugged that sucker into my house, into my home, into my kids’ bright and shiny new day by 9:00.  I carried it while I drove them to preschool and dropped them off at their doors with kisses and hugs.  I carried it as we listened to Kung Fu Fighting on the CD player for the thousandth time after I picked them up.  I carried it during their lunch and afterward while I tried to talk on the phone with my website guy as they tore up the house around me.

When nap time came, however, and they were peeling the covers and sheets off the bed, screaming and pillow fighting and laughing and having a good ol’ time, all of the stress of carrying that unnecessary crap spilled out through my yelling mouth.

When the kids finally went down for their naps, I took Dharma on a long walk through the afternoon woods, breathing in and out, in and out until I relaxed.  I walked back into my house finally centered.

Then I walked upstairs.

Paul was trying to help me get the kids ready for their swim class, which was in 20 minutes.  But Oliver didn’t want to go to swim class because he wanted to stay home and shoot the breeze with the fireplace guy and Lucy wouldn’t let anyone but me change her diaper and dress her and she wanted to wear her princess dress and not the swim diaper and swim class was starting in 15 minutes and then in ten minutes.

Eight minutes before swim class was to start, Oliver was crying and I was yelling and threatening that if he didn’t want to go to swim class, “then he won’t be able to go to gymnastics (which he loves) on Monday either!”  Irrational, empty threats barreled out of my mouth in a torrent.  As the final exclamation point to my tantrum, I slammed the door behind me as I left the house and crunched through the snow toward the car.

Swim lessons were a blissful reprieve, but as soon as we got home “the moose” (Lucy) took my tall glass of water and dumped it behind the bookshelf while I tried to redeem myself by playing Uno with Oliver after dinner, bedtime came and went, and Oliver and Lucy again were screaming and jumping on the bed, thinking they were hilarious while I tried to poke their toothbrushes through their sealed-tight lips.

Despite my threats otherwise, we ended up snuggling and reading books and telling each other “I love you with all of my heart” as we turned out the lights on Mama’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I was exhausted, not so much from the craziness of raising an almost-three and almost-five year old, but rather from carrying around the weight of that psychological crap I hung on to all day.

I poured a hot bath and picked up Mitch Albom’s newest book, “Have a Little Faith.”  The book stems from a request to Albom by Rabbi Albert Lewis, “the Reb,”  to write his eulogy when he dies.  It’s an incredibly thought-provoking book, well worth the trip to the bookstore.  Anyway.

Tears plucked themselves from my eyes as I compared my day to the Reb’s definition of happiness on page 102:

Albom begins:

“So, have we solved the secret of happiness?
‘I believe so,’ he said.
Are you going to tell me?
‘Yes.  Ready?’
Ready.
‘Be satisfied.’
That’s it?
‘Be grateful.’
That’s it?
‘For what you have.  For the love you receive.  And for what God has given you.’
That’s it?
He looked me in the eye.  Then he sighed deeply.
‘That’s it.’”

When Paul came home from dinner with his buddies, I told him about what I had read while I swiped the tears off my cheeks.  I told him that I hate when I let my stress get the best of me, when all that really matters is that we are together and healthy.

Our heads on our pillows facing each other, he smiled at me and said, “Janna, we are learning how to be parents.  We are still young, still learning about Life.  Most days are great.  These are the days we learn from.”

My husband, the kid who struggled in school and joined tables with the other kids with “learning disabilities” is the wisest person I know.  I’m lucky to have him in my life at the end of my most terrible days.

It’s true.  We are still learning.  Even when we become parents and are supposed to know how to live by now.  And it’s also true that what truly matters is simple: be satisfied, be grateful, and have faith.

Yesterday I was not the mother I aspire to be.  And because if it, I took a step closer to wisdom.

Happy New Year!  It’s been a while since I’ve written this blog because I have been busy with–get this–my NEW YEARS RESOLUTION!  It’s kind of funny to me because there’s a lot of hype around New Year’s Resolutions which I don’t buy.  I actually believe that at any moment, any time, any day, we can decide to change–each moment we are alive we have an opportunity to make a new resolution.  We don’t have to wait for New Years.  And since we are all human and make mistakes and fall off wagons, I don’t want to have to wait for another new year to try again to change something about myself.

This is precisely why the practice of writing in a journal is so powerful: When we write, we are in a conversation with our deepest selves whereby we are in continual reflection.  When we see our reflections on a regular basis, we are better able to see where we are headed in Life and where we want to head.  When we write, we reveal the truth of ourselves.  We get to a point where we can’t hide, we can’t wait, and we can’t lie–our lives stand starkly before us and demand to be listened to.  Because of this, we are moved to grow and evolve.  Just as a plant cannot help but grow toward the sun, the same is true for us humans.

Since the day I read Ramona and Beezus by Beverly Cleary and I walked upstairs to where my parents sat at the kitchen table and announced I was going to Be A Writer someday, I have known this is my destiny.  How do I know?  I don’t know how I know. I just do.  It’s in my blood.  It’s in my soul.  It whispers to me when I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and when I’m driving and listening to loud music and when I hear the “chink” sound when I drop my .50 into the cup for a refill of coffee.  It is there.  All.  Of.  The.  Time.  And I feel damn lucky for it.

You are what your deep driving desire is; As your deep driving desire is, so is your will; As your will is so is your deed; As your deed is so is your destiny.

-The Upanishads

To clarify: While I have finally accepted that I am a writer, (I figured that out a couple of years ago when I was actually in the midst of writing “I want to be a writer”  for the 1000th time.  I had been writing for 20 years before it dawned on me.) I have revised the declaration of my dream to be: I want to write books for kids that make them feel the way reading Ramona and Beezus books for the first time made me feel.

This is what I’ve always wanted.  It’s been 30 years since I realized this is what I wanted.  So the questions begs of itself, why haven’t I yet?

Fear.  Insecurity.  Because really smart people write books.  Because I don’t know how.  Because I don’t read Important Books.  Because I’m too busy.  Because I’m in school.  Because I just had a baby.  And another.  Because I’m writing my thesis.  Because I have to do this first.  Because, because, because.  Blah.  Blah.  Blah.

I do believe things happen when they are meant to happen.  That we can decide what we want, but we’re not necessarily in charge of how or when it will come to be.  That a tomato plant can only bear fruit when it is good and ready.

But if we do not apply action and effort to our dreams and desires, we can wish until we’re blue in the face and nothing will happen.

I’ve been writing a young adult novel for four years now.  Well, off and on for four years.  After wasting days crying and whining to Paul about not having time to achieve my dream, after getting crabby with my family because I was actually crabby with myself, I realized that unless I make a commitment to myself to sit down and write it to completion, whatever and whenever and however that may be, it will not get done.

“…then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  -Anaïs Nin

So this new year, 2010, for better or worse, I resolved to get my tired butt out of bed in the dark of the early morning, before everyone is awake, grind the beans and pour the water into the coffee maker, and write.  I will repeat this process until the day I fall off my chair with the realization that it is finished.

Again, I have no idea when or how this will happen.  All I can do is make a commitment to at least show up to the page and try.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” –Martin Luther King

Writing Exercise: 1)What is your deep, driving desire?  2)What is keeping you from that desire? 3)What can you do right now, today, to begin the journey toward that which makes your soul sing?

I ask you, if not now, then when?  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a huge reservoir of time will magically appear.  It won’t.  Rest assured, life will continue to flow and fill in the spaces until you decide you are ready to answer your soul’s calling.  Answer it!