I have felt short on ideas for blogposts recently, and tonight it occurred to me why.
Life is, right now, extremely sweet. We are all happy, Cherry and Violet are in a lovely phase of long play cycles and very high levels of connection with one another, with me and with Noel. Violet is sleeping pretty well, waking just once or twice a night with long stints in between, and both children are suddenly sleeping until 6.30-7am after years and years of 5.30am starts.
After a seemingly endless round of chest and sinus infections lasting from mid-January until late March we are all finally feeling better. I am running again and finding time for yoga, and Noel is happy to be back cycling to work and playing football.
My low moods and lack of energy have melted away and I have felt calm and content, firmly anchored within my body and my self, and a great deal of mental clarity and space. The sunshine is back, both outside my front door and inside my head.
Hence I feel creatively entirely lacking because without anything wrong, what is there to write about?
It actually really made me smile when I realised that was why I wasn't bursting with blog ideas. The start of this year was tough in a lot of ways and it gave me a lot to think about and reflect upon.
With the literal and metaphorical blue skies comes a lack of intellectual 'pop', for want of a better word.
I have felt reluctant to sit and write a blogpost about the small and beautiful things for fear of jinxing it, it all 'going wrong', a sense of impermanence and a knowledge that in life and particularly in life with children, there is always a new challenge waiting in the wings.
I almost fear contentment because it comes with a sense of lack of progress or purpose. If I am not striving for something - to overcome or to understand - I feel like I am standing still.
There is also an element of anxiety in having no immediate challenges to overcome. If all is well in my world, shouldn't I be using my newfound time and space more productively?
Always, always that relentless focus on achieving, doing, producing.
How different life is when you are just being.
