Closing the door to the bedroom, I breathed a sigh of relief as I tiptoed down our creaky hallway to the stairs. The toddler was in bed and the baby was finishing up a nap; I had a few minutes to spare. At this time of day, I usually felt like I needed a nap too, but I knew it was my one window of time when I could write, uninterrupted, for a little while. Slipping into the kitchen, I reheated my lukewarm coffee from the morning and headed to my spot at the dining room table.
Moving aside the pile of mail and some stray crayons, I pulled open my laptop to begin writing. As eager as I was to get to this moment, when I finally sat down, my mind went blank, and I caught myself remembering that my daughter needed new pajamas, oh and someone’s birthday was coming up. There was always so many ways to fill the afternoon without ever finishing the list. Pushing these tasks aside, I finally just started typing, sometimes jumping back and forth between editing something I had already started and jotting down some thoughts for a new piece. I also kept a document open that was specifically for pure brain dumping in case I needed to just get some words flowing. Five minutes in, when I had finally found my flow, almost as if on cue, a wail would resound from the monitor; child number two had finished his nap. Up the stairs I went, to retrieve said child and plop him into his seat in the kitchen while I tried to snag a few more moments to write.
This is just a snapshot of the daily writing routine I developed during my self-initiated challenge to write thirty minutes every day for thirty days. When January arrived with its enticing array of new year ambitions, I knew that creating a daily writing habit was a goal I wanted to tackle. But instead of simply telling myself that I would write every day of 2023, I knew I needed a more attainable objective to get started. Thirty minutes every day seemed reasonable, so I set a date and started writing.
I wrote while rocking babies to sleep, while nursing on the couch and during those magical afternoons when both children slumbered calmly. I feverishly typed into the notes app on my phone or jotted down scattered thoughts in my journal while the toddler colored. I wrote in the car after arriving home with both children sleeping in their car seats. I wrote, heavy-eyed, in the evenings after the bedtime frenzy. I wrote letters to friends and edited old essays. Sometimes all I could muster was a brain dump of the muddled observations I had throughout an especially hectic day.
It was pure determination and encouragement from fellow writers that kept me going. There were more days than not that I didn’t want to write and too many times to count when it was just purely inconvenient. But then there were the moments when an idea would suddenly bloom from those scattered scribblings. When somehow the words embodied my feelings flawlessly and sounded good together, like the notes to a melody that flows effortlessly along. Most times I felt as though I were dipping my toes into a vast, expansive ocean of possibility that was overwhelming yet enlivening. I could either become consumed by the waves, or channel their energy as my own.
A mentor of mine once told me that consistency is love. It is through our daily willingness to show up for ourselves and our family that our love can truly be seen. The same goes for our personal gifts. Consistently choosing to write every day for thirty days felt like a love letter to the One who instilled within me the desire to write in the first place. Though I didn’t write a novel, or anything particularly spectacular, I realized how much can be accomplished from small, but dedicated habits. I found myself working on multiple projects at once, when usually my writing was limited to one piece at a time. When I carved out a place for daily creativity, I found that those random ponderings throughout my day could swell into something more than a half-baked idea. Through writing, I could process a difficult feeling, or put into words the countless, indescribable emotions that motherhood invokes.
I’ll admit that when the thirty days were done, I released a small sigh of relief, contentedly closing the door on a challenging, but successful experiment. I took some time off from writing for a bit of creative rest, but I left with a sense of deeper motivation and determination to continue the writing game, wherever it may go.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Acceptance Speech”.
