I’m a list person. I always have been. I love the visual feedback of accomplishment when I make a list and cross everything off. I always have a “to do” list. Always.
Now that I am in sleep-deprived mom-of-an-infant (when do they stop being considered a “newborn”?), I am even more dependent on my lists, both for the validation that I am doing something with the days at home in yoga pants and for the help they offer my distracted brain.
One of the things I do is write down lists of things to blog about. The days are busy and a thought will come to me and I’ll write it down for later.
The problem is, later never comes. I keep going with the endless chores and lists and another idea comes along and I add it to the pile and just keep pushing it aside. I have thousands of blog posts waiting to be written. Hundreds of moments that have now passed… What it was like to worry about becoming a mom of a second child in the midst of a blended family, what transitioning from work to staying at home was like. All moments passed. All thoughts unwritten.
I have plenty of excused, sure. But how valid are they really? Sure there’s plenty of stuff to get done and there always will be. But it only takes a few minutes to push pause and write. And this blog isn’t intended to be a perfect specimen of writing. It’s intended to be real. Scattered thoughts from the middle of the night because the baby is awake, typos because I’m writing this from my phone during a gymnastics class kind of real.
So I’m working on doing rather than just planning to do. I had the idea for this post and went to write it in my journal but stopped. The four year old is playing alone in her room happily. The baby is sleeping. The laundry is running and the crockpot is cooking supper. Now is exactly the kind of “later” I have been waiting for.