Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: June 2019

  • 154 // A New Project?

    I stayed home again from work. I was hoping to intercept our engagement rings as they arrived from the postal service but I found out too late that they had been delayed and would not come today after all. Now I have to try to leave early tomorrow (or whatever new date and time the package tracking app demands I be available) to sign for it.

    I spent the day doing what I always do when I get some free time; I cleaned the house. I should have been writing, but I didn’t know what to write so I finished up a few drafts here, backdated them, and pledged not to fall behind again.

    I did come across a new 52-week writing challenge idea. Inspired by Andrea Askowitz, I’m thinking about writing an essay a week, every week, for the next year.

    I think it would be good practice not just for writing but for focus and idea generation. I’ve always written best and most consistently when I have a direction and a deadline and this might just be what I need to start posting real content here and to start submitting pieces to other blogs and publications too. Plus, I think it would just be fun.

    So, 50+ essays in the next year, whew! Should I do it?

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 153 // The Older I Get

    Tonight we had dinner with my dad. I love seeing him, but it’s hard seeing him too. There are things bubbling below the surface: pain, misunderstanding, trauma, abandonment, and all sorts of questions too complicated to ask and answers too deep to dig from the past. At the same time though, there is so much love, and pride, and a connection that runs DNA deep.

    It’s strange how all the same pain and confusion can exist between mothers and daughters too and yet with time the relationship develops quite differently and both end up nearly opposite from where they began. I was always a daddy’s girl but the older I get the closer I grow to my mom and the further away from my father I feel.

    I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. I think it’s simply about gender and experience. I think it’s part of the process of growing from your parent’s child to their friend.  I know my mother and she knows me now in a way I can never know or be known by my father. I feel a comradeship with her connected to the pain of being a woman that I know now my father will never understand.

    In my father is my past and in my mother, my future.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se

  • 152 // Feel Guilty Days

    Do nothing days are great when they are planned but when they aren’t they are more like feel guilty days. I’ve been having a lot of those lately.

    I’m avoiding the to-do list and conveniently forgetting again and again what needs to get done. This is what I do when I am overwhelmed. I get tired. I shut down. I feel the need to rest when the reality is I desperately need the opposite. I need to get up and do something! But knowing doesn’t make it easier. Knowing only makes it more shameful.

    By now the day is gone already so there is nothing to be done but to take care of myself. The rain is falling, and it’s lovely. The thunder is clapping, and it’s thrilling. I’ll lean into that and try again tomorrow.

    These entries are inspired by TDH.se