Just write

Right now, my house is empty except for me. BG just got on the bus for kindergarten, and little sister went out shopping with her dad. There are a million things I haven't done (just you wait), but I am instead sitting here and typing. 

Because it matters.

I want to eat healthy, I want to exercise every day, I want to finish reading a book, I want to start   acutally follow through on a meditation practice, I want to have a clean house, I want to play with my kids more.  But when push comes to shove, whenever I get quiet and actually listen to the sweetheart voice deep in my head (the one I like to claim doesn't exist the rest of the time), it says simply, Write.

There are other voices that are louder. There's the voice that tells me I don't have anything to say that matters, there's the voice that tells me I am letting down my family and friends and being selfish when I focus on something so "silly," there's the voice that tells me everyone will laugh at me and no one will like me anymore if I put myself out there. Those voices yell in my ears and in my head, and instead of writing - or actually doing any of the other perfectly important things I said above that I want to do - I end up scrolling facebook. I eat. I shop. I mindlessly click on things or watch TV shows I don't even really like. I'm so busy NOT writing that I don't do anything else.

On days when I write something, everything else goes better. I know this. I've known this for a long time. But fear keeps me quiet, guilt keeps me busy, shame keeps me small. Those voices, those feelings, they're real and they're mine and I don't want to judge or be ashamed of them. 

But that quiet voice, the one that tells me to just write, that's me. That's who I am at my core. That's who I want to nurture. 

And so I am. Little by little. I will forget. I will slip backwards. But that's okay. I'll still be here.