the nudge (and the gnome)

 Sometimes, I reread a few old blog posts and think of all of the things in my head and on my heart that I could write about. I think about the things I want to write about, the things I could put from inside me out into the world for me to always remember. 

But I cannot. I cannot just write what I want when I feel like it. It doesn't work that way. For me, writing happens because of the nudge. It is a feeling I get inside, like somewhere deep inside my writing gnome who lives amongst my organs finally nudges me, hands a paper with what needs to come out all the way up to brain. And then, when I finally sit down to my computer, by journal, whatever, it comes out of my hands. 

I have smothered that gnome inside of me for awhile now. 

The rushed feeling that comes with having so much in life to do seems like it would happen gradually. And in some ways, it does. In other ways, you look back and suddenly can count multiple years since you did something, since you sat bored with a clean apartment and napping baby, since you took all of your mite in the fall devotedly preparing everything for Christmas without a rush or worry in your head. Since you sat and wrote one of the many things down that rests on your heart and is now in a cluttered pile of nudges lying on the floor of your brain. 

It has taken me until the 31st year of my life to realize that I truly have a gift for something. Writing is not hard for me. It doesn't take much effort. The words come, the are written, they live, done. I think I assumed that everybody was that way, and then those with other talents simply did all of that without effort and only I was eternally unskilled. But words have always mattered to me, and they have always come without as much effort as one may assume it would take. 

So here I am. Again. Trying, trying, trying to get all of the stacks that my now slightly angry and overtired and impatience gnome is ready for me to put out of my head and into the world. I want to leave something for my children. I want them to know the things that were on my heart during the times they won't remember. I want them to know that I was somebody who was their mom, and also me. That I was growing and changing and evolving nearly as much as they were while they became people and while I became a new person. They have given me the life I have right now, and I want them to know about that life. I want them to hear my thoughts, know my desires, feel my love for them from a time when it was it's purest, deepest, newest. 

So here we go, little gnome. Back into the world of words.