Every morning, I take a walk. It’s become a habit that the first thing I put do is put on walking clothes.  I wait for my boys to be ready to go to school and I walk with them to the bus stop. They get on the bus and I keep going for a couple miles. Sometimes I try to jog it. I put in my ear buds and almost always listen to a podcast. I love them and being out of the house, away from people who may really need a question answered, makes it possible to actually learn things.

I have an entire list of podcasts I love, one of which is Rob Bell’s RobCast. He was a pastor for a long time (but not in an annoying way), and now focuses on being an author, teacher, podcaster. A few years ago he wrote a book called “Love Wins” in which he wrote about hell and other things. It got a few people pretty upset. I thought it was pretty great. Anyway, yesterday morning I listened to the episode where he was talking with Glennon Melton Doyle. She created Momastery, a blog in which she’s ridiculously honest about her life and she’s funny  and people love it. She wrote one post about encouraging all the moms of young children to quit feeling pressure to “carpe diem” – seizing & appreciating a whole day is just too overwhelming. Just try to “carpe kairos” – a few sacred moments of the day. Like when your kid says that one unsolicited “I love you” or shares with his brother. Just a tiny moment. Seize those.

So yesterday morning while powering through yet another rainy walk, I listened to Glennon and Rob talking about how Momastery started. She wanted a place she could be honest and writing was that place. Glennon said speaking truth verbally can be really difficult, although everyone lives truth in one way or another.  They speak the truth through their lives. In her own experience as an alcoholic she’d use the liquor to tell people she wasn’t not okay. And bulimia. People use all kinds of things to be honest about whether or not they’re okay. Food, drugs, clothes…whatever. When people can’t verbalize the truth of how they’re doing they use something else.

She says it better than I am – give it a listen …it’s right at the beginning.

I started to feel a bit emotional. It was slightly confusing for about two seconds and then I realized Oh My Word, that is why I snack nonstop every afternoon. I’m feeling stuck as hell – waiting for kids to do homework, stop fighting & finish their chores. Make some sort of dinner, or more often than not, let the kids eat what they want. They’re favorite dinner is “on your own.” It’s my least favorite time of day, I’m realizing. I’ve been telling myself this by packing as many calories into two hours as I possibly can. Odd way to communicate with myself, yet it is what it is. One reason we have so many “on your own” dinners is I’m so full I can’t even think about making dinner.

And then it becomes a habit and I’m not even feeling anything anymore, I’m just doing what I always do.

Glennon also talked about how she got started writing. It’s a good story in and of itself, but my favorite bit was that she created a discipline for herself that she’d write every morning (early, since that was the only time available) for 90 minutes, at the end of which she’d always hit publish. She’d publish whatever she wrote every stinkin day. There’s no room for trying to make things perfect when the timer is counting down. This turned out to be important because her first viral post (“Don’t Carpe Diem”) was something she probably wouldn’t have put out there if she didn’t have that commitment. It was just a “whatever” kind of post. She wasn’t excited about it or thinking it would be any different than anything else she’d written or thought. If she had no daily writing & publishing discipline, it probably would never have seen the light of day. It’d go in the “This might be something someday” file.
I’m going to try that daily commitment to publish idea. Read it if you want. I don’t have an overwhelming urge to find a place to be honest. Truthfully, that sounds crazy to me. (ha!) But I do have an overwhelming desire to write regularly. It’s time to just do it already.