Tuesday, October 20, 2015

The Waiting Place


I was staring at my computer screen. I felt the urge to write, but I had no idea what to write about. I've been in this predicament before and I usually find inspiration. Yet today it just couldn't come to be. Today turned into a week or two. I find myself now looking through the blog and realizing it's just a bunch of posts with just pictures. Pictures of the exciting part of our lives and adventures, but nothing that really gets my thoughts and emotions out.
I typically write about life's every day struggles and adventures. Except life hasn't seemed to be overly exciting or great recently. Sure we've had our fun adventures (Tour of Pumpkin Patches for example), but everything else just seems mundane. Life has been normal. At least normal for us. Daycare isn't crazy as I have a small number of kids who are all younger. The start of the school year has gone quite smoothly despite all of the big changes. All big changes went more smoothly than I was expecting, including Hubs taking a new job. The only difficult thing to get use to is not having a loud house. Even that has been tough for the kids. They miss their friends. I started a post on that before I realized I've already written about it. Damn. My kids have been surprisingly well behaved, minus our threeanger who has surfaced and the typical tantrums of a five and seven year old. Nothing I haven't touched on before.
Well behaved children who love and help each other don't really make entertaining stories. They just make me feel happy and lucky. Laundry, going on long walks, and watching scary movies after the kids are in bed don't make for interesting stories. That makes me just like most 31 year olds with children and little ambition to go "out on the town." Deciding whether or not to buy a new car, what to get the kids for Christmas, and what we want to do in the middle of November with our first free weekend in a while....some call this adulting, I call it waiting.
I just seem to be waiting. I've got a lot of projects in the works, but I'm just waiting for the events to get here as I prepare for them. This does not make decent writing material. I'm sitting here just typing, trying to write about every day life and I'm suddenly thinking of Dr. Seuss' Oh The Places You'll Go:
"You can get so confused that you'll start in to race, down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place.....for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go, or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to come or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting."
I'm not necessarily complaining about my waiting place. I'm just not quite use to it. I am finding my ways of enjoying this waiting place, the repeats of every day, the sweet moments to breath in the fresh air around me, the seemingly mundane things that I probably should be writing more about so I remember them. I always get compliments from people about my writing of the craziness that surrounds every day life with kids. It's exciting, it's funny, it gives people a 'thank god that did not happen to me today' moment, but it also gives hope to those who are feeling the same as I am. If nothing else it helps me understand my own feelings on life at any given moment. However, that is just not life right now.
I guess I feel like my boom bands are playing quietly at the moment. Unfortunately I thrive, my writing thrives, when my boom bands play loudly.  I don't have any wild or crazy stories. Life is just going as smoothly as it can. While I'm grateful things are going without any bumps, I like the loudness of the boom bands and I've gotten pretty good at jumping over the bumps. The bumps at least make for decent storytelling.
(P.S. Feel free to call me out the next time I'm panicking about how intense life my life can get. I'm sure I'll kick myself for writing this piece and I'm fairly certain I'll be jinxing myself as soon as I hit the 'publish' button)