So, I’m finding it a little strange trying to write while being a self-consciously “inspirational blog.”

I was working on a post that was going nowhere. Thank goodness I lost it. Really. Me TRYING to be inspirational is not a pretty sight.

I’m working on cleaning my office, the small room off our bedroom. I love my office for the mess that it is, the oasis of zen it could become, and what it represents: all of me. I’m constantly trying to pull it into balance. I think deep down I believe that if I do I will find balance, too. So this is another of my resolutions for 2006: to find zen in this room of my own, even if I only get a glimpse of it.

Here are two things that I found tonight while not creating zen.

1. This quote from a journal I kept when I was 11 (1979): “I went to visit my fern today. It was a little drooped but I gave it some water. I’ve thought of this great idea for a book. I’d write about the life of a fern in my image. This time I’m going to make an outline. All the other books I started and didn’t know what to do so I just forgot about them.”

There is context to the fern visiting, but I won’t go there. This entry gives you some insight into why I blog and don’t write books. It also gives me flashbacks to NaNoWriMo. For the life of me I can’t wrap my brain around what “the life of a fern in my image” means. Can you? Give a guess. What on earth would an outline of such a book look like?

2. Excerpt from A Room of My Own, by Virginia Woolf. “I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister….She died young–alas, she never wrote a word…Now my believe is that this poet…still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences….For my belief is that if we live another century or so…and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too; and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves,….then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down….I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”

I’m not Shakespeare’s sister, but this blog here, it’s the clean room of my own. It’s my room of zen.

It’s worth working for.

And once again I’ve managed to not clean my real room tonight. THAT sister I’ve got to work for. She’s a tough one to find.

++++++

Hannah has been trying to extend her bedtime routine longer and longer. After the rocking she wants to get water. Then we stand by the crib. She puts her hed against me and moans, “cuddle.” I squeeze her tight and say “Are you done?” She says “no” quickly and then mimics me saying “hurry up” in a sing-song voice. Then I fly her like an airplane into the crib.

Last night I said, “Do you want to fly like an airplane?” She said no. Then, “Do you want to fly like Superman?” She said, “No. snowman.” So for the past two night she’s been flying into her crib like a snowman.