The Push
Sleep and I don't get along. I have, over the years, attributed my insomnia to many things. Usually stress. September and October tend to be my worst months, so it only makes sense to blame the pressures of a new school year on my lack of quality sleep. The truth is, it isn't stress. Or perhaps more honestly, it isn't only stress that keeps me awake at night. It's words.
I write in my head all the time. I compose, recompose, edit, alter and rewrite emails I'll never send, conversations long since over, scenes I wish had come out differently. I work each one through, creating the perfect comeback, retort, explanation or expression for my feelings, often taking hours of sleep away just to find satisfaction in what I should have said, might have written or could have expressed better.
Tonight is no different.
Years ago, I felt God pushing me. I was unsettled, searching and uncertain about my direction in life. I was single, a parent, a homeowner, gainfully employed, but I was lost. It took me nearly three years to finally make a major move - sold my house, uprooted my child and moved - to rediscover a calling I had been ignoring. I found myself back in the classroom, teaching in a state I had never lived in. God knew where I needed to be, I just had to be willing to follow.
I've been feeling it again. I've been complaining and whining and stressing but it wasn't until a few recent conversations that I've finally been able to articulate what's really going on. I feel a push. I don't think a cross-country move, or the selling of my home, or uprooting my family is necessarily in order this time (you can breathe a sigh of relief now, Chief), but a change is coming. All things considered, my own mother could have predicted this change and she's been gone quite a long time now. I recently spoke with my dad about my frustrations with my career and my need to do something that brings passion back into my livelihood. When he, in his calm, wise, paternally protecting manner suggest I do more writing, I wondered how he had enough restraint in him to not just say, "DUH, Amy. WRITE." Anyone who knows me knows I love to write. Obviously, just looking at how long I've been blogging, writing isn't a new idea at all. I might just be the last one to admit the truth of the direction God is pushing me.
Just this week, at school, we recognized our students of the month. I teach second grade, so the "ceremony" was little more than a pizza lunch with parents, a short, redundant paragraph read by each teacher and a colorful, clip-art filled certificate for each recipient. And yet, I couldn't leave it at that. I saved my "speech" for last of all my colleagues, knowing they wouldn't be happy if I went first and they read their trite statements after, but I expounded on the need to celebrate more than just the child in front of us, but all the people who shaped, educated, raised and loved this child. While I may have quoted Hilary and her over-used "it takes a village" concept, in a few short sentences, I painted a broader picture of the importance of working together to create life-long learners and genuinely true democratic citizens of our global world. I'll admit, it was probably a bit too philosophical for my pizza-and-coloring-page audience, but it was my 30 second stage and I took advantage of it. Several people commented later, each and every one saying something along the lines of, "you always write the perfect thing". Writing isn't new to me. Sometimes it isn't even hard.
And yet it is. But it feels like I'm turning a corner. I've always loved to write, I've always kept a journal, a notebook, jotted stories, written speeches, notes on my phone, ideas for school...it's just who I am. But just saying that makes me realize it's bigger than that, it's who I am. On one such note, I have a quote that I picked up along the way by my favorite author, Barbara Kingsolver. It says, "The very least you can do with your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, live right inside it, under its roof." I need to stop saying I like to write and start believing I am an author. Live inside it, Amy.
And that's where it gets scary. When my dad suggested I write, the unspoken suggestion was that I write with perhaps more intention and frequency. "Without concern to content" is a free pass to creativity, but living under the roof of my hope to truly be an author means I need to write with intention, purpose and craft. Maybe not right away, but the kind of writing I've always dabbled in has allowed me to be as lazy, imperfect and uncompromising as I want to be. To move into the next phase is to actually put appropriate effort, time and care into it. I likened it to why my dad doesn't golf anymore - the time it takes to really be good at it, has to match the desire.
But I suspect sometime in me has the desire to really be good at it. Not just along the "I've impressed a group of elementary parents" good, but truly good. Good like my name is on the cover of a children's book, or good like I've been asked to present at a conference good. A new level of good. But good takes work. It takes time. It take a vulnerability that scares the shit out of me. It isn't hard for me to impress my own class of eight year olds with a story I wrote. But can I impress adults?
Could I ever impress a publisher?
Live inside it, Amy.
So, lying awake at midnight on a Tuesday night, I feel the lyrics of Anna Nalick running through my head, "Two a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song, if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to." This push I feel, is a need to find my passion once again. God has used multiple people in many different ways lately to say the same words - "Write, Amy". And so I shall. I have no idea what that writing will look like, be about or even the structure it might take on. But I am going to write.
For five years, I participated in NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - in November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, something I accomplished all five times (I even have a poster). I haven't done it in years, but this seemed like a good impetus. Years ago, I wrote a novel - one half during one year's NaNoWriMo, and the other half during the next year. I printed it out months later, with the idea that I would go back, edit it and make it actually worth reading. I was eating dinner out alone while Jacob was at youth group at church, and a person saw me marking up pages in a binder and said, 'Is that a novel? Did you write it?" It was one of my favorite moments in all my life. Being able to answer yes to both was somehow so gratifying, even though I knew then (and even more so now) that the novel was absolute crap. It was a bucket-list accomplishment for me. I never opened that binder again.
It's time to add a new bucket-list item. Get published. Somewhere, somehow, some day, get my name in print.
Bear with me over the next thirty days as I write with abandon. No clear direction, no pre-defined topic or structure, but just writing. Maybe somewhere along the way I will find a spark, or nugget of something that will turn into something more. Maybe I will know the direction I am headed once I get moving on this journey (or maybe I'll just rule out a few directions!) All I know, is when I hear my dad say something to me that sounds so very much like the exact words my mom would have said ("She'll either be a teacher, a lawyer or an author!") I think it's time to sit up and pay attention.
Thanks, Dad (and Mom) for the nudge. Having given me this talent some forty-odd years ago, it's completely within your rights to suggest I finally get off my duff and get around to putting it to use! The Mister is just going to have to get used to my side of the bed being empty at times (probably an improvement from the tossing and turning he's grown accustomed to sleeping with me!) As Dad said, "What have you got to lose?"
Live inside it, Amy. Live inside it.
I write in my head all the time. I compose, recompose, edit, alter and rewrite emails I'll never send, conversations long since over, scenes I wish had come out differently. I work each one through, creating the perfect comeback, retort, explanation or expression for my feelings, often taking hours of sleep away just to find satisfaction in what I should have said, might have written or could have expressed better.
Tonight is no different.
Years ago, I felt God pushing me. I was unsettled, searching and uncertain about my direction in life. I was single, a parent, a homeowner, gainfully employed, but I was lost. It took me nearly three years to finally make a major move - sold my house, uprooted my child and moved - to rediscover a calling I had been ignoring. I found myself back in the classroom, teaching in a state I had never lived in. God knew where I needed to be, I just had to be willing to follow.
I've been feeling it again. I've been complaining and whining and stressing but it wasn't until a few recent conversations that I've finally been able to articulate what's really going on. I feel a push. I don't think a cross-country move, or the selling of my home, or uprooting my family is necessarily in order this time (you can breathe a sigh of relief now, Chief), but a change is coming. All things considered, my own mother could have predicted this change and she's been gone quite a long time now. I recently spoke with my dad about my frustrations with my career and my need to do something that brings passion back into my livelihood. When he, in his calm, wise, paternally protecting manner suggest I do more writing, I wondered how he had enough restraint in him to not just say, "DUH, Amy. WRITE." Anyone who knows me knows I love to write. Obviously, just looking at how long I've been blogging, writing isn't a new idea at all. I might just be the last one to admit the truth of the direction God is pushing me.
Just this week, at school, we recognized our students of the month. I teach second grade, so the "ceremony" was little more than a pizza lunch with parents, a short, redundant paragraph read by each teacher and a colorful, clip-art filled certificate for each recipient. And yet, I couldn't leave it at that. I saved my "speech" for last of all my colleagues, knowing they wouldn't be happy if I went first and they read their trite statements after, but I expounded on the need to celebrate more than just the child in front of us, but all the people who shaped, educated, raised and loved this child. While I may have quoted Hilary and her over-used "it takes a village" concept, in a few short sentences, I painted a broader picture of the importance of working together to create life-long learners and genuinely true democratic citizens of our global world. I'll admit, it was probably a bit too philosophical for my pizza-and-coloring-page audience, but it was my 30 second stage and I took advantage of it. Several people commented later, each and every one saying something along the lines of, "you always write the perfect thing". Writing isn't new to me. Sometimes it isn't even hard.
And yet it is. But it feels like I'm turning a corner. I've always loved to write, I've always kept a journal, a notebook, jotted stories, written speeches, notes on my phone, ideas for school...it's just who I am. But just saying that makes me realize it's bigger than that, it's who I am. On one such note, I have a quote that I picked up along the way by my favorite author, Barbara Kingsolver. It says, "The very least you can do with your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, live right inside it, under its roof." I need to stop saying I like to write and start believing I am an author. Live inside it, Amy.
And that's where it gets scary. When my dad suggested I write, the unspoken suggestion was that I write with perhaps more intention and frequency. "Without concern to content" is a free pass to creativity, but living under the roof of my hope to truly be an author means I need to write with intention, purpose and craft. Maybe not right away, but the kind of writing I've always dabbled in has allowed me to be as lazy, imperfect and uncompromising as I want to be. To move into the next phase is to actually put appropriate effort, time and care into it. I likened it to why my dad doesn't golf anymore - the time it takes to really be good at it, has to match the desire.
But I suspect sometime in me has the desire to really be good at it. Not just along the "I've impressed a group of elementary parents" good, but truly good. Good like my name is on the cover of a children's book, or good like I've been asked to present at a conference good. A new level of good. But good takes work. It takes time. It take a vulnerability that scares the shit out of me. It isn't hard for me to impress my own class of eight year olds with a story I wrote. But can I impress adults?
Could I ever impress a publisher?
Live inside it, Amy.
So, lying awake at midnight on a Tuesday night, I feel the lyrics of Anna Nalick running through my head, "Two a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song, if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to." This push I feel, is a need to find my passion once again. God has used multiple people in many different ways lately to say the same words - "Write, Amy". And so I shall. I have no idea what that writing will look like, be about or even the structure it might take on. But I am going to write.
For five years, I participated in NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - in November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, something I accomplished all five times (I even have a poster). I haven't done it in years, but this seemed like a good impetus. Years ago, I wrote a novel - one half during one year's NaNoWriMo, and the other half during the next year. I printed it out months later, with the idea that I would go back, edit it and make it actually worth reading. I was eating dinner out alone while Jacob was at youth group at church, and a person saw me marking up pages in a binder and said, 'Is that a novel? Did you write it?" It was one of my favorite moments in all my life. Being able to answer yes to both was somehow so gratifying, even though I knew then (and even more so now) that the novel was absolute crap. It was a bucket-list accomplishment for me. I never opened that binder again.
It's time to add a new bucket-list item. Get published. Somewhere, somehow, some day, get my name in print.
Bear with me over the next thirty days as I write with abandon. No clear direction, no pre-defined topic or structure, but just writing. Maybe somewhere along the way I will find a spark, or nugget of something that will turn into something more. Maybe I will know the direction I am headed once I get moving on this journey (or maybe I'll just rule out a few directions!) All I know, is when I hear my dad say something to me that sounds so very much like the exact words my mom would have said ("She'll either be a teacher, a lawyer or an author!") I think it's time to sit up and pay attention.
Thanks, Dad (and Mom) for the nudge. Having given me this talent some forty-odd years ago, it's completely within your rights to suggest I finally get off my duff and get around to putting it to use! The Mister is just going to have to get used to my side of the bed being empty at times (probably an improvement from the tossing and turning he's grown accustomed to sleeping with me!) As Dad said, "What have you got to lose?"
Live inside it, Amy. Live inside it.
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