It Doesn't HAVE to be this way

As a teacher, nothing bothered me more than kids blaming their shortcomings on disabilities. However, the older I get, the easier it becomes to do just that. I'm sure that I should have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder a LONG time ago. I can remember being sectioned off from the other students in the Gifted Program so that at least somebody would be getting work done. Parents just didn't medicate kids back then like they do today, so I was never lucky enough to be able to blame the disease.

To date, my life is one full of incomplete projects. I have boxes of journals in my attic that have 15 used pages. I write in them for a couple weeks and am overcome with embarrassment two years later when I realize it has been two years since I last wrote. Somehow, purchasing a new journal and starting over "for real this time" fixes the problem in my mind. Yet thirty two journals later I have yet to discover which time was real.

Let us muse over my scrapbooking career. Ten thousand pictures: check. Books: check. Basic supplies: check. Paper galore: check. Case for supplies: check. Actual pages even begun: hmmmm...oops.

Photography career: Camera: purchased. Digital Photography for Dummies read: half. Cute subject: birthed. Number of actual worthwhile pictures taken: 7ish.

I'm sure most readers will notice a pattern at this point. (Seems that I should notice by now.) My students even noticed it right away. They knew this pattern so well that eyes would roll every time I spouted off an enthusiastic description of a new project.

It's not that I don't want to finish these projects. It's not even that I never finish projects. I went to college. I married a wonderful man. (Though the actual ceremony was something of a "skin of my teeth" affair, even after a two year engagement...) I even graduated college. I got a job as a high school band director the day after I walked. (In December! A life dream and hard to manage in the middle of the school year!) My husband and I even spawned one of the cutest creatures on earth. Of course that project only took about ten minutes. Beyond that, I was finishing it whether I remembered I was supposed to or not. (Now. If I can just remember to leave WalMart with her each and every time I come that way.)

When I was younger, it was the actual projects themselves that held me up. Being a big dreamer doesn't combine well with being distracted by fireflies. When I was eleven I was sure I would play on the US Olympic Women's Volleyball team in 2000. (I also always wanted to go to Australia. Two birds, one stone. That's smart for eleven!) The problem with that goal wasn't desire or motivation. The real problem was that I didn't grow after eleven. I went to high school with 95 pounds on my five foot two inch frame. Not much of an Olympic athlete.

No, it's not desire that stops me. It's not even usually the height of the lofty dream. It's remembering and distractions. For example, early this morning I decided that today was the day I would start this blog. My darling child spent last night with her Grammy, and husband was off at work. I got up and headed for the computer, but detoured to the shower because I was freezing and needed to warm up first. Then, I headed downstairs, but instead of hanging the left for the computer, I hung a right for the kitchen. Breakfast in hand, I finally made it to the computer. Thirty-seven minutes into my facebook ritual, I remembered that it was story hour day at the library and rushed off to collect the offspring. Time spent writing productive prose: none.

The whole day went by, and at child bedtime, that nasty little guilty conscience started nagging me. I sent the husband to oversee the pajama and toothbrush ritual. I collected the cold tea I forgot to finish and delivered it to the microwave. I walked in to the computer and started pulling up appropriate screens. Upon the realization that my house feels more like a meat locker than October, I headed upstairs to find my hoodie. Then I remembered that I had just pulled it out of the dryer. (ADD and multilevel homes are excellent fitness tools.) Back at the computer, I had just clicked the cursor onto Word when I heard, "MOMMY! CAN YOU TUCK ME IN?" Blare through the baby monitor on my desk. My child is adorable, but she can't seem to understand that you don't have to YELL to be heard through the monitor. Hoodied and childless I finally sat down to write this.

Then I remembered my tea...which, of course, was cold again.

My friends keep demanding published stories. They can't understand why I laugh at this suggestion. It took me three and half hours to write a 1000 word blog post. I did, however receive the most wise advice from one of my youngest friends last week. I was musing over the mere idea of myself actually completing the ENORMOUS project of publishing to this friend (a former student, now in college-NOT one of the shortcoming blamers). I rattled on about being a mostly average writer with a slightly humorous subject and the memory of a gnat standing at the bottom of Mt. Publish in hysterics over the thought of lifting one foot to actually climb the thing until she finally interrupted me and said,

"It doesn't have to be that way, ya know."

Humph. Darn it. She's right. It might take me twenty years, but it doesn't have to be "undone".

So welcome, new friends, to my journey. Committing all this in front of the world is going to help force me to get it done. Some day my baby will have her life chronicled. She may not be seeing too well when her kids give her a copy in the nursing home, but it's the thought that counts, right?