A visit from good friends had me in tears in my kitchen last night, but let me back up a little.

In the fashion of all great deadbeats, I’ve vanished from your lives again. Maybe you didn’t notice. Maybe you’re rolling your eyes at the suggestion that you would notice my complete and utter lack of writing. I’ve noticed, and as usual, I’ve been hurting from the absence of words to share. I’m a deadbeat. I’m owning it, and it’s hurting me more than it’s hurting you.

My excuses are almost always good. I went through a huge and cathartic reckoning where I had to account for some pretty heavy-duty shortcomings, and make amends with some pretty important people. That shit ain’t easy. It’s humbling, and painful, and it’s private, so I couldn’t really share the details. It took the piss out of me, and left with this raw combo of self-hatred, and newly acquired self-love. The latter is so weird and unfamiliar, that I had to constantly work at it to scrape through the few weeks leading up to the next big thing.

We moved. We’re still in the country, far away from city life, but now my nuclear family has a home of our own. There were bountiful blessings living with our in-laws, but it was most definitely time to find our own home, and it’s the perfect home for our unique family. What a gift from the Universe! Our pre-teen daughters get their own bedrooms and bathrooms (Hallelujah!) our little boy gets his own room and mommy has a private grown up bed again, and we all have a beautiful pool to enjoy. Hosting friends in our own space is a healing that I didn’t even know I needed. The house is wonderful, but this big change is not without some growing pains. For example:

I haven’t really slept well since mid May. Life stress leading up to the move, and trying to transition Noodle into his own bed has taken it’s toll. I need some great strategies to help transition this little guy so that he can sleep on his own, and I need a full night’s rest.

The dog is making us crazy. She’s SUPER high energy, very mouthy, not yet housebroken, and deaf. The children are somewhat terrified of her, because she’s drawn blood from all of us. I  bit off way more than I can chew here, I realize. It’s in my nature to throw my hands up from this frustration and walk away before I can reap the benefits of a mature relationship that has weathered the shit storm, in this case of puppy hood. I will fight that nature, because I really hate my ‘run for cover’ impulses, and I’ve committed to giving this dog a better life. She’s so beautiful, and when she looks at me with those hazel eyes…well, I’m keenly aware that neither of us are going anywhere. Sorry daddy, you’re just going to have to deal with this unruly fur baby of ours.

We’ve radically changed our diet and lifestyle. Our whole family has given up carbs of all kinds and sugars of all kinds. The adults stay below 30 net carbs per day, and our kids only get sugar from berries. No more wheat, grains, rice, etc. All gone. For just over two months now. A huge change, and I’ll tell you more about it in future posts. Why such radical change? Basically because the excessive amount of sugar in our diets is killing us, the information we are fed about ‘proper nutrition’ is a lie created by big agricultural corporations, and because I want to live as long as I can, in the very best shape I can be in. Reading, listening to podcasts and finding and cooking new recipes has eaten up so much time, but it’s been so very worth it.

But all of this is bullshit, isn’t it? There will always be excuses for why I don’t write, and I’ll never realize my dreams if I continue to cower behind life. Something else is always going on, but in the midst of this, there will always be time to write. If I don’t write it’s because I’m afraid. It’s because I’m succumbing to that external voice that tells me I have no right, that I have nothing to say.

I’m sorry that I fell into that well again. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better blogger. I’m sorry my novel is gathering dust, and that I judged all of those women in my last writing class for continuing to hammer away at the manuscripts they’d been working on for years. This writing business is unbelievably hard when I’m not doing it, and effortlessly easy when I am. It’s not easy to be a great writer, let’s be clear, it’s easy to find the words. They flow like honey, and I can barely type fast enough to catch this.

And so, in my kitchen last night, when my friend shared how much his brother enjoyed my writing, and was missing my posts, his brother who I never would have pegged in a million years as the kind of person who would like my style, I was moved to tears. My writer’s ego is huge and fragile. I realized in that moment that this guy is exactly the kind of guy I want to get to with my words. The kind of girl he would marry is the kind of girl I want to reach with my fiction. I felt like I was getting just the kick in the ass that I needed to pick up where I left off here.

So Robbie, this one’s for you. Thanks for reading, I appreciate it more than you can ever know.