A New Year's gift realized

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Now's the time when everybody's New Year's resolutions come out. Lose weight. Travel more. Work less. Be a better friend, be a better mother. Be more patient and forgiving. Enjoy life more... And aside from being whisked away by a really hot, available guy who wants me to come watch football and drink with him on Friday nights – I hold every one of these impossible hopes and dreams for the New Year, too.

But there's one goal –one resolution– that really bugs me. It's one that digs away at my worth because I feel like I'm not strong or smart enough to ever make it happen.

Every year I say I'm going to write some good shit down and pen and publish something really great. I tell myself I'm waiting for the right time. I keep waiting for TIME to allow for it. Time when the kids are still at school, time when all the laundry's done and folded. Time when all the Christmas crap is packed neatly back in storage. Time when the beds are made and dishes are put away. Time between when I come home from work and when the bus drops the kids off. Time after I get that run in. Time after they go to bed at night.

I was starting to feel a little defeated, inadequate even because I'm nearing the end of my 42nd year and I haven't done any great shit... I was starting to get really depressed about it – and that big ball hasn't even dropped yet. But then today I went back and re-read some of the words I wrote this past year. I went over all those pieces I penned – things written sometimes through voice text on my Notes app while I was driving. Things I wrote from the bathroom floor or on the driveway while my kids rode bikes this summer. Things I wrote after laying awake at 3:30 a.m. because Anxiety is the only one who sleeps with me now. I went through the comments from friends and strangers near and far, who took time to read these things I wrote and then told me what it meant to them.

I included some of those comments here, alongside an email I found that my husband sent me about a story I wrote years ago. He was never one for many words. He simply said, "you have a great gift." He was always a champion for my writing.

Y'all have made me realize that I'm doing it now. It may not be compiled in a bound cover on your coffee table today or anytime in the near future, but I'm doing it right now, here and there as I can. I tell people all the time and there's no other single truth about me – so long as I breathe, I will write. It may always be in a fledgling personal blog with just 2,000 likes, but no matter where my words land, I'll put them out there. I hope to always have you all to read them.

Thank you for encouraging me and appreciating what I have to say, even if I say things that are sad, silly, inappropriate or dotted with the f-bombs that accurately accentuate every bit of my life right now. Thank you friends, family and strangers of the internet for reading and sharing the only thing– the only gift– I have to give you.

Happy New Year, and here's to many more written words in 2019!
xoxo Andrea