Category Archives: writing

Hitting the Pause Button…on Blogging. Thanks, Blissdom.

June 21, 2012balance, life, writingKirsetin

Happening around here this week…

My son has been driving me around, from Target to Costco and beyond, practicing with his permit.

My other son is away at a sleepover camp, and I heard he’s already downed 7 blue slushies.

My littlest boy tried out for a soccer team for the first time ever. Even though he made a team, I tryouts at this age make me shudder.

My great-grandma in-law is turning 90 and dealing with dementia.

My mother had surgery. (She’s doing fine, thanks.)

Post-worthy topics, all of these.

There’s so much to say. So much to share with and learn from all of you.

But I’m not going to post about any of these things.

This past February, I attended Blissdom, an information-packed, fun-filled, swag-fantastic blogging conference. I’d been taking an online writing class from Meagan Francis and several of my classmates at Blissdom, too. I met Danielle and Sarah and Doña and our fearless leader Meagan; I met my editor at Babble; I listened to the wise words of Jon Acuff and Jeff Goins and Michael Hyatt.

And by the way…Michael Hyatt? He’s a rock star. If I turn out half as solid as that guy, I’m golden.

The speakers challenged me in so many ways, but most of all they challenged me to go deeper. To write what I love. To be who I am. It sounds wishy-washy and woo-woo-y and obvious, I know, but I promise you it’s not.

It’s about using this one short life intentionally. It’s thinking about the end of my life and what I want my family and friends to remember. It’s thinking about if that happened, right now, what they really would remember—and making changes while I still can.

It’s thinking about what matters most.

I’ve been blogging for several years about kids and life, reading, learning, travel, and more. So much more. I’ve found friends and a community I never realized existed. I treasure all of that.

But today I’m hitting the pause button. I’ve ramped up my freelance writing for magazines and businesses, which is fantastically fun. It also means I have deadlines in addition to a family and friends. And yoga. And playing basketball. And travelling. You get the picture.

I’m taking a few months off from blogging, but I’ll be writing more than ever. You can still find old content by clicking the words in the cloud on the left—it’s not going anywhere.

And in the meantime, if you need a writer or speaker, by all means, holla.

On Being Kind, Being Right, and How to Load the Dishwasher

March 31, 2012friendship, perspective, Wisdom From the Ages, Wise Words, writinganne lamott, friendship, wise words, writingKirsetin

Is anyone else as amazed as I am by the many and varied perspectives we all have? On Wednesday, I wrote about how hard it can be for me to choose being kind over being right, depending on the circumstances. I had a lot of fun contemplating Anne Lamott’s quote, “You can either practice being right or practice being kind.” But even better, I loved reading these other writers’ responses.

scales — photo by srqpix of Jason Luper mural

Velveteen Mama disagreed a bit with Anne Lamott and argued that “the crux is our dependency on the outcome.”

In her post, SusieJ described how taking her boys to a church they like–not the one she would choose–has been a surprise blessing.

And Mayberry Mom just made me laugh, as she agreed that it’s difficult “to let go of being right when it doesn’t really matter,” but insisted that how we load the dishwasher does matter!

Making Memories

February 23, 2012family, life, perspective, writingKirsetin

There’s nothing quite like an accident to snap life into focus.

For the past 6 months, as I’ve focused on my writing career, I’ve barely had time to shop for groceries. This isn’t a complaint. Although we’ve run out of milk twice, I’m happily, ecstatically, writing and have met a slew of wonderful writer friends whose works I relish as I read them in print and online. But there’s a trade-off to everything and in the short-term my trade off is leisure time. Last fall, when my writing class instructor, Meagan Francis, asked all of us, “What are you willing to give up to find time to write?” we all laughingly agreed that we were willing to give up cleaning the house. But her question was important because it helped us understand that you really can’t do it all. When you add a writing career, something else stops. So if you notice that we run out of bread or that I’m not caught up on the latest TV show or even that I’m not running on Wednesday mornings, it’s okay. I’m figuring out how to make this all work, and in the long run, we’ll have bread. Really, we will.

All this to say that when my 9-year-old took a head-first 5-foot fall into a large boulder at a park last weekend, I suddenly had time. I had time to calm him down. To re-assure my other kids that he’d be fine. I had 6 hours to spend in the ER, watching them do x-rays on my little boy’s jaw, wrist and elbow. Watching him lay on a gurney as he slid in and out of the cat scan machine. I had lots of time to text my husband, away on business, with updates and to wait for the doctors to re-assure us that our boy would be fine.

And he is fine. He’s banged up but good, has a broken (permanent!) front tooth, and might not be climbing over any railings in the near future, but a little Dermabond here, and a little Bacitracin there, and he’ll be as good as new. Okay, he’ll need a little dental work, too, but these are very minor things. Very. Minor. Things.

He doesn’t remember falling. In the moments after the accident, my poor little guy kept looking at the blood, which seemed to be everywhere, and asking, “What happened?” After we explained, he asked again, and, a few minutes later, again. None of his potential injuries was as scary as that—as not knowing how hard he hit his head and what that meant.

In the hours that followed, I re-scheduling carpools, lunch and cancelled appointments for the following day. Because of the concussion, he wasn’t allowed to read or watch TV for 24 hours. So I read to him. We went to the car wash. We visited the dentist. I bought him a milkshake. We did nothing but spend the day together. As I look back on that day the edges are blurry but my son, in the center, is in sharp focus. He’s fine.

And just like that I realized that it doesn’t matter if we run out of milk or bread. It only matters that we use the time we have to love and learn and grow. My kids know that I like to play games with them and take them to new places. But do they know why? Do they know that every hour we spent playing Rumikube together is an hour that I get to know them more? That every trip we take helps me to see them grow in so many ways—in how they interact with each other and with strangers? In how they incorporate the knowledge of this new place into their very being? Do they understand that I only get them with me for a short time, and that’s if I’m lucky?

They don’t, but I do. I understand that the memories we’re creating right now are the ones that will last me a lifetime, the ones I’ll recall when they graduate college or stand at the alter, or when they hold their first child. These are the memories of my life with them. So while I’m willing to let the house get messy, to run out of essential goods every now and then, and to skip my favorite television show, I’m not willing to forgo downtime with my family. More than ever, I’m making time for the memories. And I’m eternally thankful that my little boy is fine and that we have lots more memories to make together.