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Hmdilorenzo

I am a 30-something single mom in the public education trenches who secretly calls herself a writer. I'm looking to be less secretive....

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Jump

I have been stalking hanging out at Skirt! blogs for a while now, trying to decide what witty entrance I might make now that I am one of you, but every time I decide I’m just going to take the plunge and introduce myself, something else steals my attention. Like just now, when I sat down at the desk in my home office, I noticed copious, erratic pencil markings glowing gray in the early morning sun--all over the black surface of my desk. (Note to self: watch more carefully when mischievous 17-month-old is “coloring” at Mommy’s desk.) I am not the kind of person who can live with visible dirt, stain, or general mess (which is why I often find myself brushing my teeth and Lysol-wiping the bathroom vanity at the same time), so I had to clean up the pencil marks before I typed a word.

Or, and this is a common distraction for me, I would sit down at the computer with full intent to write, and before I could even open up the Skirt! website I would be pulled into cyberspace by a story like this scrolling by on my ISP’s homepage: “Top Rated Reader Bathroom Remodeling Projects.” People, that is not a headline I can just walk away from--home improvement before-and-afters are like Sirens for me, calling me sweetly with their eggshell finishes and their solid-surface countertops and their designer colors and their stone tile backsplashes. Oh! Stone tile backsplashes! I am swooning, I tell you!

Or, lately, I was distracted by work, which is always an excuse I can fall back on, except that I am currently “between countries” on the job front. For 11 years I was a 9th grade English teacher, and when I decided I needed a change of scenery I enrolled in a Master of Library and Information Science program so I could be a school media specialist. I spent the last year in the library of the school where I have been teaching since 1996, and the week I completed my degree requirements I was told my position had been cut. I was given the choice of returning to the classroom (um, HAY-ULL NO!) or taking a position called Curriculum Facilitator (CF? I’m going to be a CF!). Meanwhile, there’s something else on the horizon that might just take me out of the public school sector for good, but I don’t want to talk about it too much because I don’t want to jinx it. But if you’ve read this far and you don’t think I’m a total wacko, maybe cross your fingers or something, because it might be the job I was born to do, and shouldn’t we all have one of those?

Or, twice since I’ve been typing this I’ve lost my internet connection. I really need to talk to my neighbors about moving their wireless router closer to the window that faces my house. (I’m kidding.) I finally got smart and started composing in Word. I only have so many paragraphs in me per day, and it would be sad if the internet ate them all before I published a single one.

Or—what? Get to the point, you say? Yes, I’m getting to that. It’s true: I am easily distracted. It’s not so much that I have adult ADD (okay, it really is)…it’s just that there is always so much to do, so much going on, so much I feel the need to accomplish. Just this weekend, my list of things to do includes editing the final chapters of a dissertation (not mine, sadly), cutting my grass, cleaning the house, doing all the laundry so we’ll have clean clothes when we go on vacation next week, updating my resume, returning all my plastic chemical-laden baby bottles to that Giant Baby Superstore for credit (yes, they really are taking them back!), and making a last-minute pre-beach grocery run. OH! And that 17-month-old I mentioned before? I have to take care of her. I am a single mom (by choice), and although I have tons of help—a whole village, if you will—ultimately it’s just me when she wakes up in the morning, and just me to tuck her in at night, and just me who decides what she’s eating for dinner, and just me who stares dumbfounded at the ruins of my living room as she totters off to raze some other part of the house. And I wouldn’t trade a single moment of this madness. Not one.

Or--and this is the REAL reason I’ve been such a slow starter--I kept thinking I really didn’t have what it takes to be here, to call myself a writer, to blog on a nationally acclaimed publication’s website. When I was in 1st grade (and also 2nd and 3rd grades) my elementary school loaded my class up on a bus and took us to the local YMCA for swimming lessons. There were five “learning stations” in the Olympic-size pool, and the idea was that we would average one learning station per day, ending the week with learning station E--jumping into Really Deep Water from the high dive. I never made it out of learning station A--jumping into 4-foot-deep water, curling up into the “jellyfish” position, and holding my breath there for 30 seconds. In three years of swimming lessons I never left the shallow end of the pool. I was paralyzed by a fear I can still feel creeping up the back of my neck, except now it has nothing to do with water. I remember watching my best friend (who was also my cousin, so I had to live with her success outside of school as well) soar through the air in Station E, and I loathed myself for not being able to just hold my damn breath already and join her. I wasn’t afraid of the water--I knew I could hold my breath and float--but what if I didn’t get it quite right and everyone saw my failure up close and personal? I couldn’t take the possibility of imperfection, so I sat on the edge of the pool and watched, and life went on, sometimes without me.

And then that shit got old. I was tired of dangling my feet in the water, and so I jumped. I consider myself one of the ballsiest (Ballsiest? Is that even a word? see, I’m so ballsy I make up words!) people I know, but it was a hard evolution, and sometimes, when something new and challenging comes along, I find myself back on the shallow end with my heart pounding and my hands shaking. And then I see all those brilliant people hanging out down there at the high dive, and I remember that I’m one of them. So I take a deep breath and I jump.