Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

About Me

90s Country Music

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I love 90s country songs, specifically those with three verses, plays on words, and a twist at the end. These are the Hallmark Christmas movies of popular music, predictable, cheesy, romantic, and sometimes they make me cry, even though (a little bit) I think they’re dumb.

I’m talking about “Please Don’t Take the Girl” by Tim McGraw. I’m talking about “Love, Me” by Colin Ray. And I’m for sure talking about “One Boy, One Girl” by Colin Ray. “Congratulations… TWINS!!!”

When we moved to Texas in 1994, I was thrust into the world of country music and I pretty much embraced it. I tried on boots. I said, “Y’all.” I attended rodeos with boys who wore large hats. I bought giant earrings to compensate for my egregious lack of appropriate belt buckle.

Fun fact. When my grandpa passed away in 1994, my sister and I BEGGED our parents to let us sing a super cringe-worthy duet version of “Love, Me” at his funeral. They declined and we felt the injustice keenly. Good times. For the record – we sounded terrible and we could NOT get through a single verse without ugly-crying. It was also a cheesy country song, I don’t think my grandpa liked country music, and we wanted to cry/sing it in a somber religious service where “How Great Thou Art” would have been considered an up-tempo number.

26 years later, I’ve convinced my 11-year-old that these songs are awesome. The circle of life is real and one day I’ll write a song about it. The first verse will be about a kid drawing a life cycle in a 2nd grade science class with his female best friend. The second verse will be about him as a young man getting stuck in a busy traffic circle in the big city for the first time while on a date with his girlfriend (THE SAME GIRL FROM SCIENCE CLASS!). In the final verse, everyone will die.

The Best Chore Excuse

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Wanda sleeps on the floor now. I blame Marie Kondo.

I started Marie Kondo-ing the kids’ laundry a couple of weeks ago. I told them they could fold their existing clothes that way too if they wanted to be able to see them more easily in the drawer.

Wanda was excited to do this and dumped out all of her clothes immediately, folded two shirts, and got bored with it. Apparently she’s nine.

When I told her to vacuum her room last week, she needed to move all the clothes somewhere.

So, when I found her sleeping on the floor, she told me it was because there was no room for her in the bed. And we don’t have a manger. So…

For three days her only chore has been to fold the rest of the clothes. One day I forgot to check if she’d done her chore. One day she somehow convinced me to trade it for another chore. Then today, she raised procrastination and childhood chore excuses to a new level.

I needed to take Laylee to the driver’s ed school to take her written license exam. Before I left, I told Wanda she absolutely had to finish folding those clothes and putting them away. Thumbs up. She was on it.

After spending an hour reading a book on a couch in the furniture department of Fred Meyer, I brought my little driver home and found Wanda on the couch playing Mario. (not Kondo)

Me: Hey Wanda! Did you do your chores while I was gone?

Her: Yep!

Me: You folded all those clothes in your room?

Her: Yeah! But I didn’t fold ALL of them.

Me: ?

Her: The thing is, it got to be really fun for me. And I started thinking, I want to have fun tomorrow too. So I saved one stack so I could still have some of the fun tomorrow!

She grinned, totally sincere.

See, that’s why I didn’t do the dishes today, Dan. Doing them was just so much fun and it felt wrong to have all that fun at once, like eating an entire Costco cheesecake in one sitting. I wanted to savor the dishes, so I left half of them to get crusty so I could have EXTRA fun tomorrow.

Speaking of fun, Snowpocalypse 2019 has calmed. Our cul-de-sac is still a one-lane road with ice cliffs of insanity on either side and there are no longer lawns or sidewalks in our town, but we can get most anywhere we want. We hear they may even start delivering mail and picking up garbage sometime next week. It’s gonna be so modern and urban up in here.

Also, today I gave approval for the final manuscript of the ice cream book to be printed. I didn’t save any of the fun for tomorrow.

My co-author Barbara signed off too so it looks like I’m gonna be the mom to a new book, coming out in July!

It’s such a long and collaborative process and there’s something really magical about seeing your words turned into something beautiful.

Snow Problem At All

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My kids and I are Canadians real bad and we crave the snow. We’re not Canadians enough to, you know, actually live in Canada or even to have watched a complete hockey game in the past six months. But we are Canadian enough to eat poutine, to wear toques, and to think we know how to drive in the snow.

Except for Wanda.

She is nine and her snow-driving skills are sub-par.

But we live in the Pacific Northwest, where our closeness to salty water and mountains strands us in a sea of grey almost-snow all winter long. Some years we get nary a flake. And we mourn so hard.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac predicted a wet and mild winter and we made peace with our snowlessness. But then the weather channel app started messing with us.

10% chance of frozen joy sprinkles.

30% chance.

JK rain.

And then:

100% CHANCE OF SNOW!!!

But we didn’t believe it. They’ve burned us before. When it finally fell, we were so excited.

We expected an inch or two and that was enough to make us crazy with joy.

 We got snow. We got more snow. We got freezing temperatures.

Over TWO FEET of snow fell in about a week in a place where school will be canceled if a rumor circulates that half an inch of snow sent Seattle a spam email once.

School was canceled.

We didn’t get in any driving practice for Laylee’s impending driver’s test. She didn’t feel up to practicing her parallel parking.

We played a Catan mega game and no one even cried.

We drank hot chocolate by the gallon and made cinnamon rolls and did puzzles and burned half an Ent in our fireplace.

The kids made snow men and snow poffs.

Our power went out Monday night and Dan and I got up at 4am to start the generator. And restore heat and refrigerator power. When he went to pull the cord, this happened.

We spent over an hour repairing the pull cord multiple times (it kept breaking) and trying again and again to start the generator. Then we said a prayer. And tried again. And it worked on the first pull!

So we had heat and refrigeration and Minecraft. We were hooked up! And the snow kept falling, even as the temperatures warmed up.

At one point our two-story vaulted metal roof got melty enough that it roof-alanched all of its snow in one massive 5-foot-tall hard-packed mound at the side of the house.

So, of course, they sculpted a sled ramp that ran from the side of the house all the way down and through the forest owned by our neighbor.

There are benefits that come from allowing your fence to be reclaimed by the moss and slugs of the pacific northwest. Those benefits include turning your yard into a deer highway and having easy access to sled-trespass on your neighbor’s property during Snowmageddon.

A couple other Snowpocalypse highlights were:

Dan working from home

hauling wood for the fire using the kids’ sleds in the middle of the night

watching Dan zoom out of our driveway to go help a friend and leave an 11-inch-deep tire tread in the snow

eating “snow” cones at our awesome neighbor’s house next to a driveway campfire

using my thermal cooker when the power was out

reading by the fire as a family

There will be consequences for this week. The kids have already missed five days of school and had one late start and they’re still home until more of the snow melts. Those days will have to be made up at the end of the year. This is going to wreak havoc with summer plans and youth conference schedules.

The trampoline looks unnaturally stretched and the back deck is suffering under the weight of several inches of unmelted snow.

These are just the consequences for our family and they’re pretty minor. I know other people have suffered much more being stuck and cold and injured on the roads and hungry. I feel terrible for them and we’ve prayed every night that people would be safe and we’ve offered to help where we could.

But, there is nothing our being stressed or anxious or mad will do to change the snow or keep people safe or make the school year any shorter. It will just make us miserable.

So, we choose to celebrate it. It’s been a fat party for a week and a half and we have made amazing memories. Thank you, Mother Elsa. We have LOVED the freeze!

Writing Someone Else’s Story

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I’m Kathryn. I write things.

I write all kinds of things. My most recent project with Familius, due out early this summer, is an adorable and hopefully hilarious ice cream cookbook, co-written with Barbara Beery to cure all of your terrible days with frozen dessert. That was a fun one to work on! I can’t wait to share the cover with you. Because it is rad. But I think it may still be secret.

I’ve published three short non-fiction books. I’ve written fiction, never published. I’ve written hundreds, possibly thousands of blog posts for several different sites.

But I still get writer’s block. Pretty much every time I sit down to write. I read something fun I’ve written in the past and think, “Who wrote that? I will never write anything fun again.” And the longer I wait in between writing sessions, the worse it gets, the less I believe I can string two coherent sentences together.

So, since my first attempt at fiction got side-tracked by several really fun (I’m so glad I did them) non-fiction projects, it’s been several years since I’ve attempted to make up stories. I keep coming up with ideas but when it comes to actually getting them typed out, I sit and stare at the screen, type a few sentences, delete them, and feel utterly and completely inadequate.

And so I keep reading. I read about great writing and how to execute it. I read great writing and drool all over it. And then I sit down to write and nothing measures up.

Well I’ve been focusing on streamlining my life lately, minimizing and essentializing, and I’ve decided to pour some real focus into fiction. 500 words per day. At least 4 days per week. That really isn’t a huge commitment. Unless you are crippled by overwhelming self-doubt and writer’s despair!!!

But this week I’m three for three. Three writing days, 1500 words. Woot. The first couple of days were super rough. But today I had an epiphany.

“Stop trying to write someone else’s book.”

I’ve read so many great authors in the past year. Shannon Hale, Jeanne Birdsall, Brandon Sanderson, Megan Whalen Turner, Grace Lin, Jennifer A. Nielsen. So, when I sit down to write, there’s some subconscious part of me that compares myself to them and tries to do what they do. And then my writing is crap.

The first two days I was writing like a poor man’s Shannon Hale. But I don’t write like Shannon Hale. I LERVE her! But our voices are way not the same. So, of course, if I’m trying to be her, to write one of her books, it will be sad. And not in a good way.

So for today’s 500 words, I wrote in my voice. And it was so much fun. Everything just flowed. Instead of saying, I need to sound more literary or sophisticated or artistic, I just wrote my story. My. Story. And I really like it.

So, you may not be a writer. But in some area of your life are you trying to write someone else’s story?

Stop it.

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Hey Girl Guy Goes to the Moon

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Dan and I watched First Man recently, or as I like to call it Hey Girl Guy Goes to the Moon.

It made me cry. But not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t because of all the fatalities in the movie, although they were heart-wrenching. It wasn’t because of all the handheld camera, although that made my head hurt. It wasn’t even because Neil Armstrong was married to the flipping QUEEN OF ENGLAND and I read online that they ended up getting divorced after 38 years of marriage.

I cried because I’m too old to pull it together, learn to move my body, and audition for So You Think You Can Dance. I cried because I will never be the youngest swimmer ever to win back-to-back gold medals in the Summer Olympics.

I cried because, sitting in that theatre, I began to plan out exactly what I’d need to do to achieve my lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. PhD in something sciency and fabulous? Probably. Get ripped and eat nothing but Kale? Definitely. I planned and plotted excitedly and then, as Apollo 11 was taking off, it hit me.

You are not going to space. Probably ever.

And I cried. Just a few tears. The tears of the bitterly disappointed.

Because the problem is, I believe I can do anything… if I really really try. I have an inexplicable and firmly held belief that any failure I have is due to a lack of effort. This can be great. It makes me want to try harder and it means I think my potential is limitless. And it can also be rough because when things don’t go according to plan, I can always find a way to blame the outcome on myself.

Long story short. I am not going to space. I just didn’t put forth the effort soon enough.

I could probably still get a flamethrower though…

 

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting my website!

Fire Hoses and Bon Jovi

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Yesterday was one of those days. From the moment you wake up, it feels like there’s a firehose pointed directly at your face.

Someone might ask, “But did the water taste good?”

And you scream back over the stream, “I don’t know! I can’t process it! THERE’S JUST TOO MANY WATER!!!”

The sheer volume of needs, my own, my kids, my friends, work, and church work just blasted me all day and I could never quite catch a breath and I could never quite finish any task before a new one popped to the top of the priority list.

Were there good things in my day? Totally! But I couldn’t process them because THERE WAS TOO MANY WATER!!!

Then as I was driving home from Cub Scouts at 8:30 at night, I turned on the radio and Brother Jon Bon was preaching to me. “Livin’ on a Prayer.” And I thought, besides when I first work up, did I pray at all today?

The answer is nope. It didn’t even occur to me. If it had occurred to me, it’s totally possible I would have decided I didn’t have time. Because the fire hose. And because the exhaustion. But it totally would have helped. Because the fire hose. And because the exhaustion.

This comes back to water for me. I am a huge believer in staying hydrated, but the more dehydrated I get, the less desire I have to drink water. It seems crazy but it’s true.

The hungrier I am, the less I feel like making food.
The lonelier I feel, the harder it is to reach out to a friend.
The dirtier my house is, the less I want to clean it.
The busier my day is tomorrow, the more I dread going to bed, even though I know I’ll need the extra sleep.

When life is overwhelming, when we’ve let things get out of hand, it’s really hard to pull it back together. Sometimes we need to pause and refocus.

Tell ourselves:

You will feel better if you take the time to eat something.
I know it’s hard but the loneliness will dissipate if you have some company.
You can’t clean it ALL at this point but if you empty the dishwasher, you’ll slow the decline into chaos and make tomorrow easier.
Staying up late doesn’t actually make tomorrow come more slowly. It just makes it come with a punch to the face.

Even if prayer isn’t your thing, you know that taking a few minutes to breathe and mediate in the middle of a firehose day will help you refocus and be more effective. If you can’t drink all of the water, take a few minutes to turn off the hose and decide which drops you can actually consume. Then go get it.

This is what I was thinking about as Bon Jovi sang my way home. But I was too tired to write about it.

Today my hose is back down to a manageable stream. I still plan to turn it off for a few minutes and regroup throughout the day.

Pioneer Complex

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Alternate Title – Someone Would Really Enjoy My Life – Why Can’t it Be Me?

Let me start by telling you about two women I know.

Friend #1

She is nearly 40 and she’s fat. My friend suffers from plantar fasciitis and the doctor says it would improve if she would lose weight but she just doesn’t have the discipline to make it happen. She just can’t stop eating fattening foods.

Her husband works a lot, even when he’s at home. They’ve had some serious struggles in their marriage. This woman has three kids, all with busy schedules and most of the work of getting them where they need to be, taking care of the home, and other domestic duties falls to her. She doesn’t live anywhere near family so they aren’t able to help her or offer her support.

She lives in a modest home with an 80s kitchen and a backyard fence that’s falling down around her. However, she can’t afford to remodel or build a new fence so she has to deal with it.

Friend #2

My second friend is in her 30s. She’s beautiful and healthy except for minor aches and pains. She loves to work out and does so frequently. She’s competed in triathlons and enjoys challenging her body to do new things. She is an amazing cook and nourishes herself, her friends, and family with delicious food.

Her husband provides well for her family but also cares a great deal about work/life balance and spending time with family. He generally keeps his office hours to standard working hours and does the rest of his work from home so he can be around for dinner and to help out when he’s needed. He supported her through severe postpartum mental illness with grace and kindness, and when their marriage hit bumps in the road, he immediately agreed to attend counseling and address the issues. They are best friends and love spending time together.

She has three of the greatest children ever born, smart, healthy, and talented young people who truly care about being good people. Her wonderful and supportive extended family members are only a phone call away and she has a caring network of fun and compassionate local friends who never fail to provide her with love and joy.

This woman enjoys living in a beautiful home in the woods that stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Her home is filled with lovely treasures that remind her of the wonderful life she’s lived. There’s not always money to do every home project she wants because she chooses to spend it on travel and experiences with loved-ones.

Probably no surprise here, but both of these are descriptions of me.

Depending on the day, I choose one and I live it.

As I’ve been doing some soul-searching lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what it would take to make me truly happy most of the time. I’m not talking about constant giddiness. I’m talking about general peace and contentment 95% of my waking hours.

I’ve pondered a few thoughts.

1. There are many people who would be delighted to have my life. Why can’t I be one of them?
2. I have everything I need to be truly happy.
3. The world we live in encourages us to delight in misery.
4. The world needs to zip it.

So, let’s talk about number 1.

There are many people who would be delighted to have my life. Why can’t I be one of them?

When looked at objectively, I have a pretty great life. I live in a free country. I am educated and work the hours I choose as a writer. When life gets busy, I don’t need to worry about making money because I have a husband who can support our family financially. This frees me up to support our family physically and emotionally. We don’t have any real stress about finances. I am healthy. My whole family is healthy. I like my kids and enjoy being with them. My parents and siblings and Dan’s parents and siblings are all living and all wonderful. I live in a safe and beautiful community with great schools and fun activities. I’m good at stuff. I’m never bored.

So, if my life’s so darn awesome, how do I find so many things to complain about?

That teacher was rude to my kid. My daughter’s friends are causing drama. The world is scary. The person I voted for didn’t win the election. My husband was snoring last night. I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do. My foot hurts. This carpet is hideous. I’m sick of my clothes. And on and on.

By noticing and dwelling on every little thing that bothers me, I’m choosing to take a beautiful life and not enjoy it the way it deserves to be enjoyed. If I can’t enjoy this life I’ve been given, who can? And why do I do this?

I think part of it comes down to a thing I call the “Pioneer Complex”.

I’m Mormon and our early history includes countless stories of pioneers who were driven from their homes, persecuted, killed, and deprived of basic necessities. These faithful people believed they were doing God’s will and traveled thousands of miles on foot to find a place where they could worship freely. We are grateful for their sacrifices. We honor them. And we talk about them. A lot.

Sometimes I think we get in the mindset that if we’re not suffering, we’re not acceptable to God. If our lives don’t suck enough, we’re phoning it in. And I’m not just talking about members of my church. I feel like many of my friends of all faiths (or none at all) get into this mindset. If we’re not struggling or complaining, then we’re not really alive, not trying hard enough. Pioneer Complex.

It’s like bragging about how sore you are after a workout.

If you can lift your toothbrush the next day without agony, you obviously didn’t push yourself at the gym. So, we overload our schedules and we look for and emphasize the hardships in our lives. Because they make us feel hardcore or worthwhile or valid.

So many of the conversations I have with my friends revolve around how busy we all are, how much drama we’re experiencing, what health problem we’re facing. While it’s therapeutic to share our legitimate struggles with caring friends, I feel complaining has become a competitive sport. We need to one-up each other.

“Oh, you think that’s bad? Wait until you hear how crazy busy my day was.”

The truth is, so much of this suffering is by choice.

We choose what to add to our schedules. We choose what drama to focus on.

I recently had this conversation with a friend.

Friend – “Oh gosh. I have so much freelance work. It’s killing me.”

Me – “Oh no. Do you hate writing? Maybe you should change jobs.”

Friend – “No. I love it. Writing is my passion.”

Me – “Okay. Is the time commitment too much? Do you need to cut back your hours?”

Friend – “No. I’m working exactly the number of hours I want. I have the time to do it. It’s just so much.”

Okay…. So, you’re really in demand. That has to feel good. You’re working as a freelance writer because you chose that profession. If you hate it, think about changing careers. If your current load is too much, cut back. But if you love it and it’s what you chose to do, why are you sighing and talking about it like it’s your greatest trial in life?

Because we are social complainers.

If we’re complaining, it means that what we’re doing is hard. If what we’re doing is hard, then we must be strong and capable to accomplish it. Complaining makes us feel important. Pioneer Complex.

My ancestors did super hard things. Therefore, I revere them. If I do super hard things, I will be worthy of love and respect. Therefore, I must make my life as hard as possible or at least not let myself enjoy it fully because if I’m enjoying my life fully, I’m obviously not doing super hard things. Ergo, I am a loser.

The truth is, I have everything I need to be truly happy.

All the elements are there. And I want to be happy. So, I’m gonna be.

When I’m standing at back-to-school night and everyone is sighing and eye-rolling about the trauma of back-to-school shopping, I want to smile and nod and think, “I’m so grateful I have money to buy the supplies my kids need and that I live in a country where we have such great access to quality goods.”

When the news stations are playing terrorism clips or disaster coverage over and over again, I want to pray for the people and donate money and take whatever reasonable steps I can to assist. And then I want to be grateful that my family is safe and dry.

Rather than vicariously living Hurricane Harvey 24-hours per day from my safe warm house in Seattle, I’m going to enjoy living in my safe warm house in Seattle. And I’m going to help people who aren’t so lucky.

We will all experience our own share of real trauma in our lives. And we will deal with it and ask our friends for help and commiseration. But when the weather is calm, and our lives are good, we should enjoy them.

I offer you a couple challenges.

1. Write two descriptions of your life like I did at the beginning of this post and choose which one you’d rather focus on.

2. Next time you are in a conversation where friends are complaining about their lives, listen but don’t one-up or add to the drama. If a true complaint about your own situation comes to mind, go home and ponder what you can do to change your situation.

The pioneers didn’t walk across the country, losing family members along the way, so they could look cool to future generations or feel good about themselves. They did it because they had to. And when times were good, they enjoyed their lives and played the fiddle or something.

Take a look at your life.

Is it good right now? Truly? Then go play the fiddle. Your trek will come. And when it does, you can deal with it. Don’t invent one for yourself now just so you can fit in with the cool pioneers. Life is too short to put on a frostbite-starvation face when it’s actually square-dancing time.

A Midlife Reflection

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I’ve been struggling since mid-September and I’ve been hesitant to share about it publicly. Much. But I’ve been meditating and journaling (because that’s how we do in Drops of Awesome Land) and I’m finally surfacing. It feels like it’s time to pull back the curtain a couple of inches and share.

I don’t love the term “midlife crisis” but I’ve been throwing it around for the past several months. It seems self-centered and indulgent to refer to something as a “crisis” when it’s completely based on internal angst and has nothing to do with actual trauma.

I am getting older and my life is changing and I don’t know what that means for me.

I want to know.

And I’m learning.

But it’s taking time and a mom-load of effort.

So, let’s call it a “midlife reflection”. It’s also a transition.

I’m not sure when it started but it really got going a few weeks after the kids went to school in the fall.

It was a transition for me from being a Stay-at-Home-Mom to a Stay-at-Home-Something-Else.

I was free. I could be whoever I wanted. And I could do literally anything. I took that seriously.

Several friends had told me about their experiences with this change, the good, the bad, and the unattractive. Some had gone back to work fulltime. Some had taken up long-forgotten hobbies or dismantled their homes completely in a decorating binge. Others told me they’d taken a full year to sleep and recharge from their many years of full-time parenting.

I’m a planner and an optimist, so I wanted to make the absolute most of this new phase of life.

I spent a lot of time questioning and mulling things over. What mattered? What was I doing with my life? Was I okay? Were my kids okay? Was I wasting my time? Should I go back to work? Should I go back to school? I started thinking in circles and I’ll admit I got a little lost.

Do I want to go back to school and become a doctor? I could.

Maybe I should get Crossfit or take up tai chi.

What if I learned how to be a contractor via YouTube and remodeled my entire house?

I settled on getting ultra-serious about my writing career.

It’s fair to say that my career has happened to me over the past ten years. I started blogging for fun. People started asking if they could pay me. I said, “Sure.”

I wrote a novel a few years back and worked to get it published and failed. When I actually did get published, it was a non-fiction book deal because a publisher reached out to me. He liked the message of my post Drops of Awesome and wanted to capitalize on my platform and all the people it resonated with.

I was excited, but again, I just rode the waves of my life.

“I want to publish fiction.”

Squirrel!

“Someone wants to take me on a non-fiction journey? Okay. I’ll do that instead.”

And it has been amazing. I’ve met wonderful people, spoken to crowds of inspiring women and girls, had TV and radio and podcast appearances and all kinds of other fun and hoopla. I’ve defaced books with my signature multiple times and people have seen that as a good thing.

How is it then that after years of blogging for pay and selling thousands of books, I still wince when someone refers to me as a professional writer? I mean… yes… I am one?

But there’s a part of me that sees it as a happy accident.

It’s like I tripped and fell down and now I have a writing career. But I don’t feel focused or driven in a particular direction. And I feel a tremendous amount of guilt, like I’ve been given this great opportunity and I’m somehow throwing it away, like I should be doing it better.

I have books, but I don’t know how to market them well. I have a blog, but I’m stuck in limbo, not knowing what or how to write anymore. I have so much freedom in my home life, but feel glued to the spot by the sheer number of options open to me each day.

So, with the kids in school, I decided now was the time for me to research and plan and become a focused career writer. I started out strong, scheduling writing time each day.

But soon, I got roped into a cause.

I had the time, so I spent the first couple of months my kids were in school standing up to a billionaire TV-star turned politician as I volunteered several hours each day on a quixotic presidential campaign.

When I got back to writing, I found I was absolutely paralyzed. I had time. I was supposed to write or market or something. Okay, go. Be brilliant.

What had mostly been a hobby was now a vague career and it felt daunting. In the past, when I wanted to contribute to the family financially, I’d blogged for specific clients so I had clear direction. Now that I was making the rules and setting the deadlines, I felt more unsure.

I decided I had a time management problem, a focus problem. I diagnosed myself with ADD to justify my lack of progress.

And I was doubting myself as a writer.

523 Ways to Be Awesome had been recently released and wasn’t doing as well as the first book.

We had a third book on the way that I was really passionate about, but the lukewarm reception to the second book filled me with doubt. I decided to pour my energy into a marketing plan for Bucket of Awesome, the third book in the Awesome series.

But I didn’t really know what to do. So, I enrolled in e-Courses about marketing. I even created one of my own to help people write their stories and promote the new book. But I didn’t have active connections in the blogging community for reviews and I couldn’t get a handle on how to pitch the book to strangers.

It’s a book to help you tell your story. It’s a book to help you discover your story. It’s a book to help you change the way you tell your story to yourself so you can actually change the next chapter of your life.

I love it. I just don’t know how to sell it. And I don’t really want to.

All writers who began writing because you really wanted to go into sales, please raise your hands. Anyone?! Bueller?

And as for my blog platform, the main reason my publisher signed my book deal, it was dying. It was dying because I didn’t know what it was anymore.

I used to write cute stories about my kids but they are old and the most bloggable things about them are not bloggable anymore. Once you hit middle school, it’s not okay for your mom to blog about everything that makes you adorable, or quirky, or wonderfully, exasperatingly real.

My most popular posts of all time were when I was sharing nuggets of wisdom I’d gleaned through years of experience. People liked when I gave advice.

However, I’m not a guru or a fount of wisdom, so when I sat down with the intention of writing something sage and life-changing, I ended up messing around online or starting new blogs about other things.

Thermal cooking anyone?

A local blog about a city so small I will never have a large readership or make any money whatsoever?

All along this journey I was reading about personal development and writing in notebooks and trying to make sense of why this transition was so hard for me and what I needed to do differently.

I made progress, slowly.

I volunteered at the school. I cleaned my house. I went shopping. I put energy into marketing activities that didn’t yield much fruit.

After several months of being home during the day without kids and not a lot to show for it, we released the third book. It happened pretty quietly.

And I mostly stopped blogging. And writing publicly. Because my writing has always been about my real-life experiences and I didn’t think I was allowed to write about what I was currently experiencing.

My midlife crisis seemed silly.

I was a Stay-At-Home-Mom with 5 free hours during the day, endless ideas for how to fill them, and no clue what to do first or how to do it well. I was paralyzed by my fear of failure and the never-ending question, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my life?”

I couldn’t write because I felt like a fraud. Because I was worried I had let my publisher and my family down and that writing about it would just let them down more or somehow sabotage book sales.

Because it wasn’t okay to feel sad about my newfound freedom. “Oh. WAH! I have so many options and a supportive husband who just wants me to be happy. My life is the worst.”

Because it seemed excessively ungrateful to feel confused and demoralized when I had such an easy and blessed life.

I did have a problem, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Reaching deep inside myself to solve my “career” and “time management” problems, I’m pulling back the layers, week by week, and month by month. And I find that the core of my struggle has nothing to do with writer’s block or lack of focus.

The core of my struggle has to do with forgetting who I am and losing site of the joy and magic that makes life worth living.

Through all the doubt and questioning and self-reflection, I’m learning or re-learning four lessons that I’m working hard to incorporate into my life, four holes that need filling.

Here’s the short version:

1. I Need L.I.G.H.T – Let It Go. Hope. Trust. I am learning to let go. Of my need to control other peoples’ actions. Of my need to control what people think of me. Of my desire to project a certain persona. Of my desire to look good, sometimes at the expense of actually being good. Of my fear of failure. Of too many things to list here.

2. I Shouldn’t Be So Careful and Troubled About Many Things – I don’t need to feel stressed to feel worthwhile. I don’t need to validate my existence with a list of checkboxes and accomplishments.

3. I Don’t Have Room in My Life for Everything – I’m learning to say no to many things so I am free to say yes to the things that matter.

4. I Would Rather Be Present than Perfect – Shauna Niequist’s beautiful book has added fresh perspective to many of the thoughts I’d been struggling to frame. Reading her words often felt like reading my own journey written out. I’ve come to the realization that a real, grounded, connected life, experienced in all its joyful messiness outranks hollow perfectionism any day.

I’ll elaborate more on each of these in the coming weeks.

Soul-searching journeys are painful. It’s hard to dig into your life and heart and realize that your priorities and goals aren’t what you want them to be. Sometimes you find that you’ve been thrashing and spinning in the service of something false and shallow.

But if you don’t take the journey, you just keep thrashing. And it’s hard on your body. And your spirit. And your family. And your life.

Life is a journey worth taking with your eyes and heart wide open. I’d rather peer deep into the very core of who I am, regardless of what I find there, than never truly know myself.

At age 38, I’m coming to know this girl in a new way and I’m frequently surprised by what I find. Mostly good. Always enlightening.

Hello, Kathryn. I will take your hand. Let’s do the next 40 years up right, shall we?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting my website!

I’m Sorry, Tired Baby Mamas, I Forgot

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I woke up this morning feeling twice as tired as I’d felt when I went to sleep. My eyes were blurry. My head felt stuffed with cheese. I wasn’t thinking clearly. In fact, the only clear thought in my head was a strong urge to never leave my bed again.

I had been up in the night with a sick kid.

And I don’t really do that anymore. Maybe three times a year. Usually, they tell me in the morning, “Mom, I felt sick last night.”

And I, fresh and chipper as a non-morning-person can be say, “Oh man. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help you now, today, in the beautiful light of actual morning?”

All is as it should be.

But last night, my 7-year-old was up with a bad cough. And, after I’d had 4 hours of sleep (which I realize is a long stretch to most moms of young babies) she came to the side of my bed, coughed wetly into my face and said, “Moooom. I feel awful. Can I sleep with you?”

Sure. Why not? Awful is my favorite kind.

She then proceeded to sniff loudly every single time she breathed in and cough explosively every fourth time she breathed out. She shifted around and asked for water… with ice… and begged me to take her temperature. She hugged me and pushed me away and smushed up against my back.

Now there’s something cute in all this. There’s something fun about being needed. But, a few hours later, when my alarm went off and I felt like dead trampled dog meat, nothing was cute.

She sat up cheerfully and hopped from the bed.

“Get back here,” I said, “I can’t justify staying in bed and not helping the middle schoolers get ready if you are no longer sleeping. And I am incapable of moving because my brains are missing. We will sleep for two more hours.”

She sighed and climbed back next to me.

**SNIFF**SNIFF**SNIFF**COUGH!!

Right now it’s noon and I’m still in my pajamas.

The breakfast dishes are undone and I can’t quite wrap my head around showering.

And I think of you, moms of babies. And I realize that I forgot. Many things.

I remembered the cuteness and the squishy thighs. I remembered the closeness of nursing a sweet little baby in the peace of the dark night. I remembered everything wonderful about my little sweet snuggle lumps.

But I forgot the brain fog. I forgot the intense, all-consuming desire for sleep and the way your days are ¼ as long because you are not mentally aware enough for the hours to count as “waking”. I forgot what it’s like to sit and wonder whether your eyes are all the way open because everything is such a blur.

I just forgot.

And I salute you. Whenever you get dressed. Or show up on time for your older kids’ music class. Or make something for dinner that’s not cooked in the microwave. You are rock stars. And don’t let the fact that no one else remembers what it’s like make you feel bad.

I’ve often thought it would be cool to go back and write a time management book for new moms, now that I’ve got things figured out a bit more.

This morning I realized that the book would have to read something like this:

How to Get Your Crap Together as a New Mom

1. Wait 6 months until you can get more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2. Take a shower.
3. Resume normal activities.

As for today, I will accomplish… Octonauts.

Drops of Awesome – Mother’s Day Sale – Now Closed

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***This Deal is now over, but feel free to order from the sites below. Thank you for the overwhelming response!!***

Who doesn’t want to tell their mom how Awesome she is or encourage her to record her life story?

It’s time.

Have you started shopping for Mother’s Day yet?

This week, I’m slimming down my personal author stash by offering my books at a discount for the holiday. You can get Drops of Awesome, 523 Ways to Be Awesome, or Bucket of Awesome for $10 each or the set of three for $25. I’m happy to sign them for you. Local delivery in the Snoqualmie Valley is free. This is mainly for my local friends and readers. However, if anyone wants them shipped within the US, I’ll just charge you for media mail shipping. I’ll have them at this price until my stock gets low. Let me know what you’d like and I’ll give you a shipping quote.

Of course, all titles are available still on Amazon and Familius. Familius has great discounts for bulk orders if you’re doing a Drops of Awesome event with your group.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting my website!