I didn't journal much last week for a couple of reasons. First off, it was a brutal week. It was the 3rd week of summer, and my kids were sick with colds. They were tired of being cooped up inside and presumably feeling irritable from too much TV. I say presumably because how am I supposed to know, but that's the correlation I saw. The longer the TV watching went on, the grumpier they became especially when asked to move on to something else. It's the electronic drug, as my mom used to say.
The other main reason I didn't journal, blog, or even really think about much of any substance last week was because all my thoughts were consumed by special needs issues. I had a couple of waste-of-time projects that I needed to complete, only to find out that they were indeed a waste of time and I received absolutely no benefit from the time invested - perhaps with the exception of now knowing that those roads led to brick walls. The point is that I didn't have much to write about or think about except things that I just wanted to stop thinking about the moment I was done with my tasks associated with said thoughts. The last thing I wanted to do was actually journal and spend even more time in the misery of bureaucracy.
It seemed counter-productive to spend my time on those things when the goal of this time is to release some of the stress out of my mind through my fingers and into the ether. It wasn't going to happen, so regardless of the negative impact TV made on my kids last week, I found myself only wanting to crawl into bed and cuddle with Netflix in order to de-stress, so I did.
But today, I thought that I would try to make myself write about something that I care about, even if it's not a great amount of content. Because I'm so much more than a parent and a parent of a child with special needs to be specific. Though it takes a lot of me time, emotional energy, and general effort, it's not all-consuming. Or it shouldn't be.
So, here I am... I'm going to write about something else about me.
As soon as I can remember anything about myself that isn't focused around my children.
Books.
Okay. Here we go.
I've been trying to read for 15 minutes a day. I used to read voraciously and really enjoyed it, but recently I've found it hard to concentrate on much. So, I thought that 15 minutes a day would be a good start. I started my quest with Michelle Obama's autobiography.
The autobiography is one of my favorite genres. I think biographies are interesting, but autobiographies, when well written and honest, are compelling, for whatever that word is worth. I tend to find the word compelling to be overused and thus has lost a part of its power. Which is a bit ironic if you think about it.
Anyway, among my favorite autobiographies was The Private Life of Chairman Mao. It was an incredibly long, but interesting and heart breaking book. It was the story of intense fear and survival. It was set in a time when everyone was scared of being back-stabbed and standing up for oneself was a privilege that no one owned, not even Mao's closest advisors.
Obama's autobiography, so far, is very different. It is much more a story of supportive success. It is a story of opportunity and open doors. I find, so far, that I'm not enjoying it quite as much as Barack Obama's book, but I am enjoying it in a different way. I'm just not sure how to talk about that way yet.
And my 15 minutes of journaling is over, so I don't have to figure it out!
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