Hello, again.

It's been awhile . . .

Heyyyy, you guys! It’s your old pal Steph, aka Mommy, for real, who yes, still goes by Mommy even though her oldest daughter turns sixteen (!!) next week. I’ve got some new digs, and I’d love to invite you over!

So, earlier this summer, I fell in love with Substack and wondered why I wasn’t over here, too. Then one by one, all the cool kids began migrating that way, and I realized that this was not going to be like that time when I missed the early blogging bandwagon by a decade, dammit, and I was going to set up camp here myself, too. FOMO NO MO! (see what I did there?)

But it’s more than that. Substack is a pretty easy way to reach people without all the bells, whistles, formatting issues, and headaches of a website, sure. (P.S. I still have mine here and I’m going to pretend it isn’t horribly neglected.) But also, I realized that I miss writing. A lot. And I’m going to start again, even if only for myself and the constant stream of consciousness that lives inside my head.

I’ve been facilitating online writing classes and producing live storytelling shows for years now, and I’m always encouraging writers to “carve out time for their practice/minimize distractions/create rituals/write zero drafts that don’t need to be perfect/just keep writing!/write!/write!/write!” and what do I do myself? I think you know the answer.

So today was the first day of the school year. I feel some bitterness about the end of what feels like “the summer that wasn’t” but I’ll save those musings for another day. I decided to instead celebrate a return to routine (read: time without kids around) and sit down at my computer and write something. So I did. No, it’s not this meandering pile of crap. It’s another meandering pile of crap (hey-oh!) that hopefully I will share someday soon.

I didn’t want to stick with it. I thought first I should investigate this whole Substack thing (I did that later), and recheck my to-do list, and see who liked my first day of school pictures on Facebook, and . . . you get the idea. But I told myself to quit beating around the bush, not to deceive myself with “writing-related tasks” and just fucking write.

Last weekend we went to Steamboat Springs, and the loveliest thing happened. I started writing an essay inside my head. While I was hiking, the words started tumbling around inside my head, the creation started coming together, ideas nudged me just like they used to, like they have since I was a child, and when I got back to the car I furiously typed them down in my Notes app. It felt delicious, addictive, energizing.

Then I came home and opened up my computer. I was worried my idea wasn’t as great as I thought. I didn’t really want to start writing. I thought maybe instead I would just organize my notes into a better order. Or, you know, quit. Do something else. Because I was so excited about the story, and what if it failed, and what if I tried to publish it and nobody wanted it? I should start outlining it first, maybe. You know, edit it before it even existed.

Then I remembered all the crap I’m trying to teach my kids about perfectionism, and how it stops us from doing things we love. How fear of failure means we never learn the beauty of resilience. So I took a deep breath and I sat down and wrote my story, for minutes, maybe an hour, I don’t know because, I! Was! Writing!

So I’m going to keep writing. Not to get published. Not to achieve something. But because if I don’t just do it, if all I think about is the end game, or the to-do list, or the how and why, I’ll never actually write. And I need to. I miss it. So here I go.

You’re on this list because you subscribed once, maybe you don’t even remember doing it, because maybe, like me, your kids were babies and now they are in middle school and high school. So you can totally leave if you want to, no hard feelings. But if you want to stick around and maybe occasionally read something that resonates with you or makes you laugh—probably about parenting or being 44 years old or being a woman in the world or being an awkward, neurotic overthinker—I would love to host you here in my cozy, low maintenance new home. Maybe you’ll get your very own Substack and move in next door. We can drink too much coffee and snuggle our dogs and wear comfy pants together.

Cheers,
Steph