loss

I used to really enjoy my time driving back-and-forth to work. It was where I would listen to my own music as loud as I wanted, I could write blog posts in my head and think about all the minutia of my life. But it turns out I only really need about 20 to 30 minutes per day of that!

{don’t the brake lights give me a rosy pallor??}
I swear to you, I am just fine! Since I started this blog I have never taken this long of a break! It has never been 10 days between posts! I can explain it all with one word: traffic.
I know I’ve mentioned that when I switched schools my commute got longer, but I didn’t really understand the greater implications of what that would mean in my life. Last Thursday, while I was sitting for about 45 minutes on the freeway on the way home for a drive that really should only take 10 to 15 Minutes, I found myself becoming more and more irritated with my commute. I was literally just sitting on the freeway. Doing nothing! And it’s not just doing nothing for that 45 minutes, it’s that sitting in traffic has pretty much usurped my ability to run and write! That 45 minutes used to be half of the time in which I would come home, change my clothes, run for 20-40 minutes and then I would take a 30-45 minutes to shower, write a blog post real quick and I was downstairs with my family by 5:30 every night. This year, with my later contract (we shifted from a 3:40 leave time to 4:10) and the traffic, a good day has me walking through my door around 5:00 to three people who are hungry for some mama and wife time.
It sucks.

{my crappy view, Monday through Friday, 4:10-5:00}
I pretty much had a tantrum this morning. Bradley and I went outside to put up our Christmas lights and he was lovely and wonderful and I enjoyed myself with him. We came back inside and I was freezing cold so I got in the shower and then realized I have an event this afternoon that I need to get ready to go to. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’ve spent my day doing things that, once again, didn’t prioritize running or writing. I got slapped upside the head with a big bout of anxiety and kind of freaked out on Bradley, telling him that I am getting increasingly more and more frustrated as all of these ideas that I want to write about and things that I’m doing build up in my head and I haven’t had the opportunity to let it all out. I told him that I absolutely needed about 45 minutes to an hour to just spend some time with my iPad alone and writing again. So here I am…

{glowing in the brake lights on another commute…}
So, while this article may seem like a giant complaint about traffic, mostly it’s about getting going again as a writer. Thank you for your patience. It’s tricky, this business of life and being flexible!