How Did I Get Here?

First of all, I think you will all be both relieved and heartened that I sucked it up, snagged a monster pile of referrals, did a massive room re-org and started Tuesday (Writing Prompt Day) off with twenty minutes of silence in which to write.

I have no idea how well they did--I was planning to do critique-alouds today, but felt like crap so didn't follow through, but I've got to tell you, that quiet time in all five classes was better than a nap. And the classes themselves have been quieter after the new seating chart etc. Somedays you win some...huzzah for the silence in the head and the time to write!!!

Which sort of brings me to today's post... I'm here writing, with CSI NY on pause, and I realized today that I've missed a whole bunch of my blogging buddiess--Knittech, Netter, Louiz, gemma--all sorts of people that I don't hardly say hi to anymore, and not through lack of wanting that oh-so-elusive peer group contact either.

It's this writing thing. I think it's taken over the knitting as my # 1 obsession (which is too bad, because I'm still actually spending more on the knitting...) I should have seen it coming.

Ladybug was born at 6:00 a.m. on a Monday. At 2:30 a.m. on that same Monday, I woke up, said several bad words because my contractions stalled out, and came in to A. Type two totally incomprehensible e-mails to my co-workers--they still laugh at that, because the time stamp was 3:12 a.m. and B. Work on BOUND. I know I've said this before, but that fight after Cory and Bracken get busy in the smaller Goddess Grover after their big fight in front of Green? Yeah. I was working on that part when the mother fucker of all contractions nailed me to the chair and cracked the core of the world in two. A few more paragraphs, and then the mother fucker's mother came and repaired that hole in the world, and that's when I stood up, stalked into the bedroom (pausing for two contractions on the way) and told Mate to wake up. "Why?" "Because I have had enough of this shit." Oddly enough, those were the same words I used when the embryo with nicotine breath who felt me up said, "Jesus, you're seven and a half centimeters dilated--what made you decide to come in now, after four days of labor?"

So I should have seen it coming. I should have prophesied that the knitting would give way to writing at 10:00 p.m. when the house was totally quiet. I should have seen that when I couldn't be alone in the living room with five other human beings I would retreat to the silence of my laptop and somebody else's world.

I remember taking a trip to L.A. with my best friend in high school--on the way there, I closed my eyes and when my friend tried to engage me in conversation, I replied, "I'm trying to nap--I do that in cars." It was a total and complete lie. I wasn't trying to nap, I was pretending I was someone else with a really hot guy and he wasn't elbowing me in the ribs--sue me, I was 16, my repetoire of tragedy wasn't quite as developed. The fact was, I had reached an uncomfortable social situation, and I was using my ample and lecherous imagination to cushion the enforced exposure to so many other human beings.

I do this at home sometimes. The kinderbraten have gone to sleep? I'm ready to be ALONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET? I'm in here, typing away, or checking my amazon.com standings or my e-mail or, usually, blogging--blogging was the ultimate for me. It was socializing while enjoying that all important silence in my own head.

And then I had to give myself a deadline. A serious deadline. I had to promise myself (and my fans...my tiny legion, we will grow...) that I would get BITTERMOON II out by June. And it seems realistic to me. I'm on page 50 already. But I didn't count on a professionalism that I thought fifteen years in public education had killed dead dead dead to emerge and suddenly suck out all the wiggle room in this well meaning promise. Suddenly, I'm not just giving up knitting time, I'm writing until 11:30--that's giving up SLEEPING time! And then I'm getting up early and taking 10 minutes to write some more. I'm giving up that all important thinking time on the john for sweet Triane's sake...and then I'm staying after school an extra ten minutes... and...

And suddenly my obsession, my 'little hobby' has taken on the overtones of a job, and if it was only that, I could quit it at any time. But it's more than that. It's a DREAM, and I'm hot so sure how to quit or even to cut back on a DREAM. DREAMING is addictive stuff--DREAMING is like neuro-heroin, and I can't stop injecting it. I DREAM of people reading my books and telling me that they were moved by them. And I know how great this dream is because it's already happened--and I ride those highs with my hands in the air screaming "WHEEEEEEEEE" even though the lows...well, you've all helped me past the lows, right?

So I guess I know how I got here...I guess the question is, how do I live here? I miss my blogging peeps. Hell--I miss my IRL friends, not that I would see much of them anyway. I miss my little ones--I need to be there earlier for them. Do I cut back a little at a time? Do I blow off the deadline? Do I give up more knitting? (Impossible...I feel like I hardly knit at all.) I mean--I don't eat lunch with my peers as it is--I'm too busy on the computer doing the small amount of blog reading I actually get in. Can I really be a decent mother while I'm working a job and a dream?

"I can't figure it all out tonight sir...I'd just like to hang with your daughter." (Name that movie, anyone?)

I guess maybe that's where I start. Mate' sitting on the couch, watching Avatar reruns...I love Avatar--one of my favorite shows to watch with my kids--who are all asleep. Maybe, I'll go check a blog or two, and then go sit with him and, well, knit. Yeah...maybe that's a place to throttle back. I mean, I wrote three pages after school today already...