"You always pick the most inconvenient times to obey."  My mom's voice was a hiss of a whisper as she opened the door to my walk-in closet only to find me sitting on the floor there, journal open and pen poised between words.  My parents had always encouraged us to keep a journal, and, a chronic procrastinator, I always intended to, but never did.  At least, when she didn't find me in bed at nearly midnight, she didn't have to worry that I had sneaked out to find some mischief of a more dangerous sort.  I wasn't that kind of teenager.  But it seems that some things don't change much, even with a decade of willpower to their credit.  My tendency to procrastinate and heightened vulnerability to good intentions at inopportune moments are among them.

My grandma told me this evening, over the phone, that she wishes I still blogged.  Me too, Grandma.  Me too.  I tell myself that all of the time.  Writing is a muscle that I've allowed to atrophy down to a pathetic raisin in the last few years.  I wasn't a diligent writer before, but I kept a decent journal, a commonplace book (A vestige of my Romantic and Neoclassic British Literature class - I'm sure there's a more modern word for it...?), and made time to write other miscellaneous thoughts, ideas, essays, etc. when the inclination struck.  But now?  With three kids under the age of four, I find that those pinball ideas still enter my mind, bounce around for awhile, and then fade away.  I never have the means or the time or, more often than not, either, to give them a home in ink.

I panic sometimes, as I wander the emptiness of my creative faculties, once blooming with ideas.  When I finally get back to all this, I think, there will be nothing left.  That may be true.  More than likely, it's not.  Life is long, my mom reminds me, on an almost daily basis over the phone.  The seeming eternity of diaper changes, nursing, and disputes over legos will be over before I know it, and I'll find myself with - dare I imagine it? - time.  There will be time to explore myself as an adult, time to pursue the interests I didn't know I had before I began the journey that is motherhood.

Nevertheless, from the depths of these little years, I cannot live solely on the promise that they will someday be gone.  That thought might be my guiding light some days, but it cannot be my bread and water.  And that brings me to this moment, almost eleven o'clock on a Sunday night, doing what I really have no time or business doing - finally obeying my inner voice, which promises that a little writing, here and there, will add color to days that sometimes seem drab.  A bit of organized thought will better preserve the bright moments that I'll want someday to relive, in quiet, sun-dappled reveries.  And a little time dedicated to pursuing the woman I have always wanted to be, the woman I so often give up for lost, will keep these years from feeling like a coma.  The words will steal me away from my babies for a few minutes at a time, but will return me to them, more able, more awake, and more alive.

So, hello again, internet.  I'm going to be that bad penny that keeps coming back, the bullhead plant that grows tenaciously from wherever life has been otherwise eradicated.  If you have found yourself here, welcome to my all-but-abandoned warehouse of thoughts.  I am writing this for myself, but should you pass by, may something here give you a fleeting pleasure or a moment of calm.