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Another Day, Another Race

I'm really hoping that every day I start one of these blogs it doesn't start with me saying something along the lines of, "This has been a really tough one to start."

Each morning I wake up pondering what I can write that day in the blog. Perhaps this would have been an easier endeavour had our youngest continued to sleep solidly through the night. However, after a week and a half of him having no problem sleeping through the night we have slipped back into him waking up 2-3 times the past two nights and it is getting to me. You forget how wonderful a solid block of sleep is until you have it again.

That is probably however just a lovely excuse I want to give myself because I have absolutely no idea what to say and to be quite honest after reading through my last two posts I'm wondering if there's even any point in my trying to say anything at all. We're often our worst critics and because I know what I was thinking as I wrote and what I was really hoping to communicate I can see all the flaws. I see the ideas I didn't communicate or communicated poorly, sentences that just don't flow or punctuation that would make me fail an elementary grammar test.

So on the heels of just feeling like I was belly flopping instead of swan diving into this challenge of mine I started to look at writing prompts. Some of them looked quite fun and I think that I probably will utilize them at some point during this challenge. However, just now (literally JUST NOW!) I decided to go a different route.

Among all the other feelings that I've been noticing in myself and carrying around these days there is this odd hopeful feeling I just can't quite place. It's warm amid the cold air. Calm and still in the swirling anxieties. Steady and bright in a wavering darkness. I'm noticing it pop up here and there but particularly when the sun shines in this particular way- where if I close my eyes and tilt my face towards it I can imagine myself sitting by the lake or a stream in summer, lush, cool grass beneath my feet and in between my toes. It's the kind of sun that makes me want to disappear in my thoughts, to just let them wander aimlessly, taking note of one and then the next. Greeting some like they are old friends, but not fearing any as though they are my enemy. I don't always feel this way about my thoughts, but it's funny perhaps it's the time of year but this kind of light, this kind of bright, winter weather always makes me want to write.

My youngest fell asleep on the way home from the mall the other day and due to his incredibly grumpy demeanor earlier in the day I was intent on getting him a little more sleep. We live near the lake so often times to extend a drive for a naps sake I will drive past our house and then back down along the lake. It's a beautiful drive and it's particularly lovely for those of you who may like to look at beautiful houses. Anyway, as I was driving along and the warm winter sun was streaming in through my window I got a glimpse of that feeling and that desire to write. Perhaps more specifically to befriend one of those people with a huge house along the lake (that sometimes even more ideally come with this little one room lake house) and see if they will let me curl up in a room designed for writing where the sun streams in through the windows all day long and I will write.

I can so concretely see this room in my head when I close my eyes, I can almost smell it. I can feel the warm, cozy openness of the room. How the light seems to warm every  surface. The old desk by the window looking out across the lake, outside a few tree branches with a dusting of snow and ice add to the view. The desk chair is comfortable but not so comfortable that you forget your purpose in sitting down. One of the walls is lined with a built in bookshelf and the colours of the books are warm and inspiring with titles that draw you over to flip through them just to catch a bit of the knowledge or story. There are ivory coloured throw blankets on chocolate brown arm chairs- which have been sat in just enough to let you sink in comfortably when you sit but not so much that you find yourself straining to get back out. The room is filled with that familiar smell of books, wooden furniture and the faint scent of a wood burning fire. Without a doubt somewhere in this room sits a cup of coffee (Still magically warm!) that adds it's beautiful butty aroma to the room.

This is the kind of room that I would happily sit in for hours. This is one of those places I can draw up in my mind if I need to think of somewhere comforting or peaceful. Do any of you have places like that?

When I get the whiff of this feeling...this call to be drawn into the creative, the hopeful, the real, the heartbreaking and the honest...I can't help but hope to be drawn in. I can't wait to see if I will!

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