Starting to Write Now?
It’s a strange time to start a blog. It’s a strange time to do anything, really. It’s an especially strange time to start a blog with a travel name, but here I am. I had moved this blog name over from the blog Tommy and I co-wrote during our trip around the world to a new platform last month before the Coronavirus madness began, and was hoping to write about our family travels. But as plans do, that plan collapsed, and I’ve been wrapped up in finding some sort of new normal, letting the idea of writing fall aside in search of toilet paper and mastering SeeSaw and managing our small business.
But I can’t really let it go entirely, so I decided to just start writing here anyway. There won’t be much travel for a while, but hopefully someday. We are having some different adventures now, likely more memorable and more life-changing than any Spring Break trip we could have set off on.
Everything is different, and everything is so much the same every day all day long. There’s nothing to write about, because nothing happens in my repetitive life, and there is everything that is worth writing about in the moments as they stretch out - struggle, sadness, fear, connection, love, joy, (did I already mention fear), and laughter. Time stretches out so long, every day goes on and on with the same cycle of laundry, homeschool, work, and what on earth is for dinner. And yet, time rushes by, unmarked by the normal appointments and events, and it’s hard to even know what day it is. It’s impossible to be away from here - there’s nowhere to go - and yet so easy to be not present.
I have been reading Little House on the Prairie as a read-aloud with the girls. It makes a fascinating juxtaposition for me with our current lives. They are miles from anyone, all the time. All they have is their household (Ma, Pa, and two kids and one baby), almost entirely. And yet, they don’t suffer from social deprivation; they aren’t in tears because they can’t go to a concert or out to dinner. That is their life - they expect no different - they find joy and sadness, hope and fear, all within the four walls of a tiny log cabin with only each other. No letters, nevermind Zoom video chats or Instagram or Marco Polo. No information beyond the sounds, sights and smells of the world around them. I try to find that kind of awareness in the ten minutes a day that I meditate, and it is elusive, slipping away from me moment after moment.
It’s a strange time to start a blog, and yet, I enjoy writing, and so I will write. I hope to remember how I felt during this historic time, what I experienced and perhaps find a few moments of that satisfaction in the simple joys that Laura Ingells Wilder describes so beautifully in my own modern way during my first (and hopefully last) pandemic that has forced us into a modern adaptation of Little House on the Prairie that I never really wanted to try, but have at times found great joy and pleasure in living.