balance...

I need to remember this: you will not give yourself the chance to write something good if you don't write anything.

I have a story that I'm working on. Extremely slowly. I can write on my lunch and for a few minutes after Peanut goes to bed (like right now). That is, if I'm not completely bushed. Which is usually the case.

I am trying very hard to hear the characters whispering to me as my own self-doubt works overtime trying to shout them down. So I need to remember that all I can do it try to write. To let myself write.

I have been really thinking a lot lately of balance. Remembering long ago when I took gymnastics classes. Specifically, the balance beam. Four inches across. You learn at first just to walk across, Then you progress to walking and bending your knee so the foot not touching the beam dips below the surface of the beam, alternating as you walk, up and down, up and down. You grow slowly familiar. For the girls that got good at the balance beam, that four inches could seem like a lot more. Because really, you don't need more than that four inches to stand or jump or cartwheel or whatever. It's possible. Your mind just tells you that you need more. You just think you do.

The best balance beam couching I ever got was to imagine, as you stand on the beam, that you are being suspended from an invisible string that is attached to the top of your head. You can imagine that invisible string pulling you up so your head is lifted, your chest is held out and you cannot possibly wobble because of that connection, that balance you are maintaining.

I feel like my life is like that now, sometimes, except that on my grownup version of the balance beam I hold a number of fragile eggs in my hands. I hold R and the small universe that is our marriage, I hold Peanut and my responsibilities and commitments to her in my role as her mother and I hold my job and I hold our home and somewhere in this daily struggle, that fight I fight everyday to find that elusive balance? I hold the thing that is simply me.