Ever since the recent crash of Diary-X, I’ve been meaning to back up the blog. I normally write my entries right in the blogger browser, first and only draft. Until tonight I didn’t have a single entry in my posession. Now, this is a good thing to do. Certainly smart and productive and worthwhile. But it’s especially productive if it helps me put off any real writing for one more day.

I’ve wanted to write since I first learned my letters. And have I ever really written anything of substance that I wasn’t graded on? Nope. Not counting the hundreds of pages worth of blog writing I just saved. I started this current blog a year and a half ago. I started an earlier blog a year before that. In the past two and a half years of blogging, with the ostensible goal being to get me closer to my goal of writing books, I have not gotten one bit closer to being a writer. In two and a half years some people can write four books, and I….I have written nothing.

A friend of mine approached me recently to work on a book project that I’m really excited about. I know there is a need for the book and it could do so much good. So does that get me off my butt? Nope. Does the chance that this book could actually, seriously, get published motivate me into overcoming my fear. Not a chance. I don’t know what to do with myself.

All day long I’ve felt the computer calling me. Yes, yes, I said, I’ll get to you. I’m folding the laundry right now. I’m working on my craft book. I’m eating dinner. I’m playing three hours worth of computer games. I told myself I’d write late at night once Bear went to sleep and I had hours of quiet and the house to myself. Did I? Of course not. I backed up my blog. So now it’s 3am, I’ve got a tutoring session tomorrow afternoon, my blog is nice and secure, but one more day ticks by with me having written NOTHING.

I’m seriously pissed at myself. I’ve come up with so many excuses: I can’t write while I’m drugged up, I’m too young, I don’t have enough to say yet, it’s so hard to get things published – what’s the point of even writing it if it never gets published?, I’ll never be as good as I want to be.

I really think that writing is my life’s work. I do think I’ve got stories to tell and an interesting perspective. But I also think that I’m scared immobile because this is what I want so badly I don’t know if I could stand to fail.

I have got to suck it up and find a way past this.

Christmas nearly did me in y’all.

It was worth it, but Hoo Boy, did I need a break afterwards. So for the past month I’ve been doing nothing but waking up at my leisure whenever possible, watching old movies, and knitting. Yesterday I had a tutoring session and a book club meeting and that was the busiest day I’ve had in a month.

This morning, waking up at my leisure meant 4pm. That’s right. That wasn’t a mistype. 4 freaking P. M.!! I dragged my sorry butt out of bed just to plop on the couch and watch Oprah. Man that’s depressing. Of course I hadn’t gone to bed the night before until 6am, but still. What am I supposed to do tonight? Try to go to bed at midnight with Bear after I’ve been awake for 8 measly hours? It’s a vicious cycle.

Of course, what I really need to do is just get it through my UNBELIEVABLY THICK SKULL that I am sick and sleep is what I need. A few months ago I wasn’t sleeping so much, but I was also incapable of leaving the bed, so I guess I should be grateful that I may have fewer waking hours right now, but at least I can occasionally leave the house.

During my month off I was feeling burnt out about every single thing in life. Including this blog. And in the spirit of the New Year and the time for a fresh start and trying to decide what you really want for the year ahead, I spent a lot of time thinking about my future. I came very close to shutting this place down on several occasions until I decided I was just being a huge wuss and allowing myself to chicken out on what I really want in life, which is of course to be a writer. So I’m going to keep plugging away. Probably twice a month as usual, but I can’t let myself off the hook. I can’t stand to think of myself as someone who desperately wants something but does nothing about it. And this isn’t much, but at least it’s SOMETHING.

Bear is very close to finishing his training, and it looks like come June or July he will be a full-fledged administrator with his own building and the big bucks that come with that. It’s not outrageous to think that by this time next year we could have a house and a knocked up belly. Which scares the crap out of me. This year holds the promise of some monumental changes in our life. Changes that I’ve been working toward and pining for for years now, but now that they’re a real possibility, they seem too daunting. I’ve spent years crying for a baby, years of pain and surgeries and fake smiles while my heart was breaking and absorbing thoughtlessly cruel comments all while trying to give humanity the benefit of the doubt. And this year will be the year when we’re finally able to pursue the next step. This year will be full of needles and drugs and real estate agents and uncomfortable procedures and moving yet again and more surgeries and home loans and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, we’ll have a little person and a home to show for it this time around.

I’m certainly not in the place I imagined I’d be when this time came. I thought for sure that I’d have a successful career or a book published or a Masters to show for all this deferred time, and I have none of that. I have stretch marks on my belly and two years of disability and time spent in a boring cubicle. I’ve learned how to find something on television at any hour of the day or night and how to avoid cabin fever, but not anything I can put on a resume.

But I do consider myself to be a person of faith. And I believe that there is a plan for each of us and a path we have to walk to become the people we were meant to be. So I’m trying to have faith in that and not think that these past seven years have been a total waste as I sat on my butt with my finger up my nose. There has to have been some purpose that I am just not seeing right now. And I have to remember how badly I’ve wanted these things and for how long and not chicken out now that I’m finally getting what I want.