I started writing in this blog seriously when Rebecca turned one, because I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something tangible– something I could point to and say “hey, look at me!”– and I needed to scry into the murk to see what exactly I was doing, parenting a little toddler. I vowed to post something every month until she turned two, and I pretty much did. Some months I posted a lot more.
Now that Rebecca’s two, she’s making patterns out of everything around us, and I’m looking at the underlying structure of our lives and thinking about how we can get them to line up more transparently with our values. The things I want to write are increasingly about questioning and exploring our lives, less about “hey, look at me!” or defining what I’m doing as a parent. They’re increasingly small and specific, less about parenthood in general. They’re more like chewing with my mouth open while I talk, less digested.
What I want to do now isn’t a good fit with the long-form essays I’ve been writing. My new plan is to write a dozen bite-sized pieces, whose topic matter will be whatever I’ve been thinking about lately, plus maybe a few more on older things that I’ve been trying to find time to write about. That should be enough to figure out what I think of the short format and whether I can live with less finished writing.
See you soon!