Failing to Write Despite My Best Intentions

I had a lovely post planned yesterday. It’s half written. But then Patch needed an x-ray for his hand because it was getting more swollen and painful not better. That chewed up three hours of day. The verdict was a tiny fracture in a tiny hand bone and the treatment is a giant splint with a bandage that covers his entire hand and forearm. The injury means he can’t play cello for three weeks. This required communicating with his cello teacher. Kiki has been overwhelmed at school and needed emotional support. (She dropped two classes and cleared the air with roommates, life is better.) Link and I are still finding balance with the new schooling format, and unfortunately we’ve also still got some clean up to do from last semester. Math classes march onward even when students are too overwhelmed to pay attention. Gleek has been facing more homework than usual and she still has her history fair project looming. This required a quick meeting with one of her teachers.

It seems like this is the story of my work days. Many of them are impacted by appointments or meetings as I work with various schools to make sure that my kids are getting the things that they need. Other days are drained of energy as I continue to work on processing the emotional load that accompanies all the various adjustments that we’ve been making. This leaves me with slivers of days where I can lose myself in work. I frequently feel that I’m failing at all of it: the parenting, the work, being creative.

Yet things are better than they were, for which I’m very grateful.

I’m pondering all of this and turning over ideas for my LTUE presentation on Breaking Through the Blockages. Obviously I’m not going to be able to hold myself up as a shining example of a person who gets writing done no matter what. I don’t. Instead I’ll have to dig in and discuss the various reasons I sometimes fail to write and what I do to counter those reasons. It rarely has to do with lack of time. I’m also pondering what prevented me this week and how I’ll make next week different. I’ll start by not letting any of my kids break their bones. We’ve had enough of that for a while.