205 Days

I find it comforting to know that in spite of the fact that it has been more than six months since my last post on this blog, it is still here.


Although, it turns out it is just as difficult to decide what to say after a long time as it is to know what to say every single day.

We've been back in Massachusetts for long enough to know some things. Like that the house seems both the same and different than before, probably because we are both the same and different than before and also probably because the paint on the walls in every single room is new.

This time last week I was on a flight from Chicago to Boston returning from AWP's 2012 annual conference. At the conference, one of the panels I attended was called "Barefoot, Pregnant, and at the Writing Desk" and even though I have been to so many panels and had so many conversations about the challenges of balancing mothering and writing, it is always nice to be surrounded by people striving for the same thing. There were two things said that morning that are useful for me to remember, and be reminded of repeatedly, one is that I have to chose writing again and again and every day, and the other is that life - especially life with children - is constantly changing, which is one of the things that makes finding balance an ongoing challenge. There is no such thing as lasting perfect balance.

I almost always return from AWP feeling inspired and energized, and I was, but then somehow this past week became the kind of one-thing-after-another week in which writing gets bumped down the to-do list again and again, and so today I'm trying to remind myself that not all weeks are like that.