I wonder every once in a while why the heck I still do this thing. I wonder why I put my words down on the internet and invite anyone with wifi to read my words. I mean, it is a little weird, still, when I really think about it. It is. A little weird.
But also, it isn’t. It isn’t that weird. I started getting serious here when I had 2 kids under 2 and a husband in graduate school. I would race home and he would hand off the babies as he headed upstairs to study or out the door for class. When papers were due he would come downstairs and eat standing up and rush upstairs to finish his work on time. I used to joke that when he got his diploma, I would write my name on pencil in the back.
Instead, I got serious about blogging. I started calling myself a writer. Right when there was no more time or space, I created this space. I found the time, two minutes at a time. My life was telling me that there was not another inch of space available to me, but my heart was telling me I really needed some room to be something besides a mom or a PhD wife or a teacher. I just needed room.
Virginia Woolf famously explained that a woman writer needs a room of one’s own. It turns out she was right, and my room has been digital. When everyone needs me for food and cleaning and comfort, this space has been the space where I needed to breathe.
Sometime last year I started censoring myself and then, I didn’t blog for a month at the beginning of this year, which is totally unheard of for me. I just, wasn’t sure that what to say next that would matter. I forgot that it mattered because it matters to me. I write first because I need me to write, if it helps someone else that is also good.
In a world where there are a lot of things pulling me in a lot of directions, it is good for me to remember that making space for myself is a totally viable reason for doing something. If it is good for me. That is a good enough reason to do it. Maybe you also need some space today?
Abby Norman 
Right there with you, AND I value your words. I recently declared I was going to write for God first and he could figure out what to do with every blog post, story, etc. (Wonder if he has a platform?)
Thank you for this. I’m also in a moment of my life with very little margin, and I’ve pretty much stopped writing or blogging. It’s true that I don’t have the brainspace to form post-worthy thoughts, but it’s more true that I don’t have the capability right now to say it exactly right. So I just don’t say anything, and it hasn’t been good for me.
Timely read. I started a blog last year and for one reason or another, I haven’t written anything for it in months. Most weeks someone new looks at it and I feel bad that it’s gone astray. Today you challenge me as to why I started writing and I realise it was for me too. A quiet place to discover the inner me – to understand what’s going on in my head, my heart, my life in this season. A place to remember who God is and who I am in Him. Thank you for sharing today. I need to make time to go back into ‘my room’. God bless xxxx
I think you always have great stuff to say Abby. You may just write for you but you bless those who read what you write. I am sure sometimes it feels like you have a lot to say and others you are not so sure. I do know some of the best stuff I have read sometimes it is only one sentence in an article that will be so good it makes the whole article stand out. Sometimes it is every other sentence. You have done both for me.
Keep putting those words to the paper….