Since 2012 began, I have written nothing but email, status updates and New Years resolutions.
Seriously.
It’s especially funny because, like those of every other writer on the planet, my resolutions included a vow to write everyday.
I have a decent excuse. Saturday night I got back to Cambridge after a month in L.A. I’m jet-lagged and fighting a cold. I spent a month socializing with the friends I miss there and playing with my kid. I was on vacation and writing did not fit into my agenda. We also spent four days with Harlan’s parents in Seattle and Harlan and I left Aidan for the first time ever with my parents so we could go to Vegas to see the amazing Cirque de Soleil show, Love, make a few bucks on roulette and blackjack and get hoodwinked into attending a time-share sales event.
(I already sacrificed my Vegas poolside lounge-time for being dumb enough to fall for those hucksters’ antics and don’t need any additional ridicule! What I don’t get is how everyone I told this story to immediately guessed the conclusion, while I honestly believed someone was just offering me free gambling money and gift cards!)
Anyway.
For me, 2012 started yesterday, on January 17, and I celebrated the first day of my own personal new year by dipping my toe back into my routine. I dropped Aidan off at preschool, battled the elliptical at the gym, and shopped for groceries, all with a cool but bright sun overhead and a muck of slushy, rapidly-melting snow underfoot.
And I purposely left myself an hour before preschool pick-up to plant myself at a coffee shop and write. It was just journal stuff, mainly about what I should be writing, but considering it was the first thing I’d written in a month and a half that didn’t have a photo of Aidan frolicking in the frigid Southern California surf attached, it felt good.
And today, by posting this online, I make it official.
I’m writing again! Writing everyday. I joined a new writing group that starts Thursday. I’m trying to figure out if I should plow forward with my memoir even though my agent is unsure of its viability or delve back into chick lit. Or articles about movies. Or a children’s book. Or maybe I’ll just mommy blog a lot.
It doesn’t matter really. I’m just happy to be back, refreshed, relaxed and back. And, strangely and uncharacteristically, I am feeling completely unstressed about it. Maybe because my husband keeps pushing this miracle herbal remedy on me called ashwagandha. Or maybe because one of my other resolutions involved meditation. But I haven’t yet found the time for that one. Maybe 2012 is just going to be the year of a calmer version of me.
Highlights from our trip: Me by the Mirage pool in Las Vegas
My boys on a hike in the Pacific Palisades (that's my dad on the left)
This is how we spent most of our days.
A slice of paradise
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January 20, 2012 at 11:43 am
Erin | The Other Side of the Road
Welcome back. Just keep writing. Get terms like market viability out of your head. Don’t think of the final project. Just show up everyday and keep going.
January 20, 2012 at 1:43 pm
dreamama
Thanks honey! My agent actually loves what I wrote but worries I’m “not ready to write this story yet,” that I’m still living the story and don’t yet have the perspective to write a truly great memoir about it. And my gut says she’s right. She had someone else at the agency read it, too, just to make sure and she had the same reaction. That said, I do think maybe I’ll just keep writing it and hope that perspective at some point comes! As for you…I’m reading and loving your blog! Especially the post about driving in Dublin. I’ve been holding on to the emails, meaning to comment. One of these days! Seems like this has been an amazing experience for you guys.
January 20, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Erin | The Other Side of the Road
It has been great for us to be out of NY/LA. Of course, I can’t think of what happens after September without my stomach cramping, so some of it is pure denial.
I know it may sound hokey but a friend told me to do the Artist’s Way after she had a child and was trying to write again. I dismissed the book when I was younger and someone had given it to me for my Japan experience, but it has been a really helpful thing. I had to stop it in mid-Dec when it became clear with holidays and visitors and the boys’ birthday that I couldn’t keep to the daily commitment, but next week I plan on resuming. It helped me let go of a lot of crap and get back to writing…
January 20, 2012 at 6:38 pm
dreamama
Not hokey at all. I’m a huge fan of the Artist’s Way. I did it back in the 90s and credit it at least partially with getting me on the road to a writing career. I’ve tried to pick it up again through the years without much success. I even have some posts on this blog about a recent attempt at doing morning pages! Maybe I need to try again…
January 23, 2012 at 5:04 pm
dreamama
One more thing….how on earth do you manage to do morning pages with two toddlers?! I was just thinking I’d love to try again, but remembered how hard it was to pull off!
January 24, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Erin | The Other Side of the Road
I can only do it when they go to daycare (they’ve been going mornings), so it’s not perfect but it’s the best I can do. Sometimes S will take them in the mornings on the weekends for me to keep it up, but once the holidays came and daycare was going to be closed I knew there was no way I could do it.
And as I mentioned on my blog, I forget to congratulate you on your upcoming Boston Globe piece and ask you how interviewing Liam Neeson was…
January 24, 2012 at 11:25 pm
dreamama
I never did interview Liam. His people canceled at the last minute. It was a bummer but a relief at the same time. I was in Vegas till the day of the screening and would have had to interview him bright and early on Sunday morning. It would have been high pressure in the midst of a relaxing vacation! Still, a disappointment, especially since I work so rarely these days and could use a little professional excitement. Sigh.