As I look at the clock, I have 23 minutes before I want to be in bed.  This means I have 23 minutes to finish writing this, get stuff together for school and hop into bed.  Can she do it?  Pretty sure I’m one of those people who works best with a hard deadline or a lot of stress – or maybe both.  Anyway, here goes.

I’m officially on vacation, now for another 21 minutes.  When Saturday morning began, I immediately worked to stop thinking about anything school or NAfME related as both have been taking over my life for a while now.  Four whole days to do what I wanted; sleep in, eat good food, spend time with my best friend in a great town, miss the snow that fell here while I was gone.  Nothing was going to take away my break.  And now, after spending what I admit was a lot of time on NAfME and other things today, I finally sat down to write.  But what to write about?  How about writing about what I’m writing about?

Sometimes this stream of consciousness stuff is scary.  I thought about writing about labels again because this whole dividing people up by generations is silly and like most labels intended to help us understand each other, they do nothing but divide us further.  Then I thought about writing about being a Mama Bear, a person who feels righteous anger when someone they care about has been mistreated and all I want to do is fix it and put the person or persons responsible in their place.

Then I thought about writing about how listening to my husband eat ice cream when it’s silent in the room makes me slightly crazed.  I can hear every slurp, every swallow and even the scraping on the bowl makes me want to throw it.  But these are obviously my issues, not his.  So again, what to write about?  I only have 15 minutes now and I’m still struggling with what to write!

I found an article the other day which had five rules to writing a book.  The first rule was to give yourself permission to write a bad book.  Well ladies and gentlemen, I think this qualifies as a bad blog.  I just find myself looking at the clock and know I only have a few more minutes and I have to write SOMETHING.  This need to write has proven to be pretty powerful but the urge to curb what I’m really thinking has really thrown a wrench into it.  I have already upset a couple of people with what I write and so I feel like I have to be careful, analyzing every word I say to decide if it can be honest and yet not too honest, or something that can’t possibly be misconstrued.  I begin to understand the struggle of writers, to be honest and not worry about what others think, to write from your own perspective.  My fear gets in the way of me being honest right now, but one day it will all come out.  I can’t guarantee it will be pretty, but it will be honest.

Ten minutes left.  My husband has gotten up from his chair and headed down the hall.  He obviously doesn’t feel the need to stay with me while I frantically write something, anything to get these thoughts out of my head.  Thoughts like a friend who told me one if you don’t ruffle a few feathers, you’re not doing your job.  I may have ruffled a few today.  We’ll see.  I don’t ever see me getting to an age where I don’t care what I say – I’m just not that kind of person really.  I hope I become that person who says what they have to say despite the fear.  That’s a person I could be proud of.

Seven minutes and I think I’ll have time to re-read and edit before I find a picture to go with this.  For those of you who feel like they’ve take a trip through my mind and want to know where to get off, I apologize.  Sometimes I would like to get out of my mind as well. But I have six minutes left of break and I have a picture to find.