Productivity

I have totally disappeared off the face of the earth lately. Well. Off my blog anyway. The reason? My beautiful, purple, lap-dwelling companion is inoperable. I’m not sure what happened and I have made very little attempt to fix it yet, but I’m hopeful it will be up and running some time soon. As a result, I’m back to life as I lived it before my very own laptop came into my life last April. I can only use a computer when my husband is home and not working. That has really hampered my creative rambling time. I’ve definitely lost momentum here, but I’d like to gain some back. When I look back I find I had that nice stretch where I had a post every day and some pics to go along with them. Then my pics stopped. I think I lost my camera battery charger for a while. Good grief! Pitiful excuses. Anyway . . . I would like to go back to that. It was fun. And it was a good discipline for me to sit down every day and make something. I guess that’s why this blog is good for me. For me it’s productivity. It’ s making something. Something lasting and tangible.

Lasting and tangible productivity . . . not really a whole lot of that around here in SAHM-land. I mean there is lasting productivity: I’m working my tail off with my kids, trying to guide them into productive, Godly adulthood. And their adulthood, Lord willing, will outlast my own, so that sure is lasting. But it ain’t tangible. It’s nowhere near tangible. At this point I’m in the can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees stage, attacking each little moment with my eyes set toward the future but no ability to see just how the way this moment is handled will affect the future. Just shots in the dark, hoping and praying for the best. Mist and clouds and doubts and confusion abound. Nothing tangible here.

But there are tangible components to the life of this stay-at-home mom. There’s food to be cooked, kitchen and living room and bedrooms and so on and on to be cleaned, laundry to be done, laundry to be done, did I mention laundry to be done? So productive, tangible stuff does get done. I can smell and see and taste the food. First there’s a mess, then there’s not. I can see that. The laundry . . . well I’ve said far more than enough about laundry. Tangible productivity. But it ain’t lasting. Approximately 8 seconds after lunch is cleaned up it’s time to pull out afternoon snacks. The living room might be straight before everyone goes to bed, but Isaac wakes up before everyone else and by the time we reach the living room . . . well . . . a six-year-old boy has been productive all over it for an hour. The laundry never. ends. As soon as the last load for the day gets put away, everyone has to get undressed and put that day’s dirty clothes in their hamper. Nothing lasting here.

So that brings me to my little ramblings. Productivity. Lasting, tangible productivity. My fingers flying effortlessly across the keyboard at the speed of thought laying down words, sentences, paragraphs for as long as I choose to save them, putting ideas into heads which, for better or for worse, once they’ve arrived, remain. Filed away in the original hard drive. Even if it’s quickly forgotten, it’s stored somewhere. Lasting. Some may question the tangibility of words and thoughts. But it’s me. I really don’t need much more than that. That is my world, my tangible. Everything else, everything outside my thoughts, is a stretch.

My husband likes to make things with his hands . . . out of wood, leather, various animal parts . . . not kidding. Animal parts. Bones. Hides. Horns. Not brains yet, but I think they’re on his to-do list. I don’t make much with my hands. Well, unless you count this typing thing. Because my hands are definitely involved. I make things with my brain. I don’t have to touch it, see it, taste it for it to be tangible. I just have to think it, know it, feel it. Tangible. Something I can wrap my brain around with certainty. Tangible. . . Flake? Perhaps.

So, onward and upward . . . Back to productivity. Here’s my written pledge to try to do this blogging thing more. Not cuz I think I have something worthwhile to say, just because when I take the time to think it and write it down I come to the end of my day knowing I’ve at least done one thing today.