“Are you doing any writing?”

I scrambled for an answer to my friend’s well-intentioned,”I’m-keeping-you-accountable-and-you’ll-thank-me-later” question. I embellished my latest scribbles.

“Oh yeah, I’m working on this thing…oh, and that project, it’s going well…and have I told you about my children’s book idea?” Jude played at the perimeter of my outstretched legs as I lied.

Truth be told, I have fought it. I have grieved it. I have not wanted to believe it, the Type A, can-do go-getter in me doubting to the end. But I cannot deny it any longer. I can’t have it all. It is the bitter fact of the matter. Of course, if I had the means to employ a butler, a maid, a nanny and a groundskeeper, maybe it would be possible. Maybe I could have a toddler and pursue all my dreams while keeping my house immaculate and entertaining friends and family every weekend. But even then, I’m not so sure.

I say all this partly to explain why I haven’t been posting much lately, why I won’t be posting very often for the foreseeable future. Because I’ve tried. Tried to blog, tried to keep up with the cleaning, tried to cook more, have friends over, join mommy groups, put all the laundry away, return calls, keep up with Swerve business, come up with crafty ways to market my book, do house projects… And it has driven me to the point of insanity. At every turn, something has had to give. And that something is quality. Sure, I can do all the things I want to do, but when I’m juggling so much, multitasking my life (not to mention my son and husband’s lives as well), the quality of my investment goes down fast.

The way I see it, I get a few short years of putting in very long days to write the pages of Jude’s early childhood. These are days that science tells us he won’t tangibly remember, but they are in fact the most important days of both our lives. How I engage these mundane moments lays the groundwork for our future relationship, for his physical and emotional health, for the wholeness of our family. It is a full-time job with a daily requirement of overtime and night shift duty. And when I get a few minutes to me – just me – I’m tired. How am I to focus with any depth, devotion or consistency on pen and paper, or house renovations, or entertaining guests, or landscaping projects, or travel, or marketing my book, or…

I’m done trying. From now on, I will be Krista. I will be wife. And I will be mother. I will become exemplary at mono-tasking those few roles. And I won’t apologize for it anymore. Or feel guilty when a friend asks if I’ve been writing. Of course, being me includes things like writing, having friends over, and keeping up with the laundry. But I won’t be very good at any of it. Chances are, for a little while, I will be an unexceptional friend, a negligent writer, a lax church-goer, a mediocre cleaner, a lapsed Twitterer, a lazy cook, a scattered daughter, a forgetful daughter-in-law, a late arriver, a non-joiner, a poor hostess, and myriad other socially unacceptable labels. Nonetheless, I will be me, lover and fighter, no apologies. And the two most important people in my life will get the best of me. I won’t regret missing out on their lives because I had to write or because I had to get the garden planted or because I had to fulfill some banal commitment to a lesser thing. I’m choosing the good part now. I’m choosing relationship. I’m choosing, ultimately, to die to myself.

So, the next time my friend asks if I’m writing, I’ll tell her honestly and without hesitation, yes. I am writing. It’s just not the kind of writing you do with words.

Tags: motherhood, writing  |  Posted under life stuff  |    1 Comment