Away

I’m away right now, or I have been away, from a lot of things. Mostly from working at the library. I am on a leave of absence for another two months and have been since the fall. Ultimately, I am at home because I need to be, not for myself directly but for my family. I don’t mean to be mysterious, they just aren’t my stories to tell because my kids are getting older. So I’m at home and being at home makes everything easier, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.

Because of the way things work out, I often start and stop many things, such as this blog or my writing. Those are the things that fall away and that honestly is my own choice. I’m too tired, or distracted or worried and instead of waking up early to work, I sleep. Instead of writing 1000 words every day, I read and spend too much time online. Instead of keeping this blog going, I feel guilty for the times of haven’t and ignore it for months. At times I feel stuck in a constant loop where last week was New Year’s Eve and this week my bright and shiny resolutions have already fallen to the curb hidden beneath dirty, leftover snow

So when I read Kerry’s post about getting back to blogging I thought yes! I should do that! As a means to write and process and think things out. But there are two things I wrestle with a) spending too much time online, and if I’m honest, getting caught up in whether or not people are reading and liking what I post and b) writing things that aren’t important and perhaps sound narcissistic. How do we share our stories without having them become “all about me?” And when so many of the stories that float through my days like dust motes are often composed of struggles of my family, how do I separate myself and strengthen my own voice? What do I have left to say and is it even important?

I was making dinner the other night and listening to one of my very favourite singers Sarah Harmer. One song, ‘Uniform Grey’ began and I instantly began rocking back and forth, it was a song I rocked my first baby to over and over in our huge yellow kitchen in the best house on Dovercourt in Toronto. There is a line in that song, ‘the sunlight on the floor will always fall’ that just always clicks with me – the light part, the ‘always’ part, the general feeling of everything being okay in the end. Maybe it’s the importance of such a tiny, regular, domestic realization. The thought of bare feet standing warm in a puddle of sun. It’s one image that can be broken into so many ideas. Maybe this blog can do this? A place to spin around, write, process and think things out.