Be (2)

I thought I'd check in re: being. "Be" is my word for the year. So every time I feel overwhelmed or upset or out of control, I try to remember my word and just be.

So far it's a moderately successful enterprise. Probably you're not supposed to talk about "being" in terms of success or lack thereof, but that's where I am. Some of the time "being" results in making me calmer, happier and more thankful, and other times it involves staring at the coffee table while I nurse Amelia because I can't reach a book, a magazine or the remote control. Still other times, though, this doing nothing turns out to be a wonderful thing, because Amelia, who has yet to know how to do anything but just be, stops eating to look up at me and smile. She will even stop eating to chat sometimes. She has a lot to say in the form of gurgles, vowel sounds and, just since yesterday, a kind of raspberry-buzzing noise.

I have a hard time "being" in the mornings. Before I was pregnant, I would wake up, get some coffee, and spend 20 minutes or so writing in my journal. I didn't write anything special there, not poems or anything, scrawls and lists and these swirly things I like to draw, truly just pretty much crap. Honestly, I tried to find a better word than crap, but that's what it was (from my dictionary: Crap: noun; something that is of extremely poor quality; nonsense, rubbish, junk). Still, it usually resulted in some kind of plan for the day. After I wrote I would sometimes read poems, or at least my poem of the day calendar.

Then I got pregnant, and as I recorded ad nasuem, haha, my mornings were spent throwing up in the sink. No more sipping coffee, it made me queasy. Now I can have coffee, but it's not really a sipping situation, more like gulping. I have become a second cup person, even. And I have yet to find the 20 minutes to sit and write in the journal. I have managed to write while I'm pumping from time to time, but it's not quite the same thing.

Little did I realize how important these quiet mornings were to my sense of sanity and my creative process. I think they helped me realize what was on my mind and decide what needed to get done that day. Now, more often than not, I get out of bed because Amelia won't sleep any longer. I have coffee while I pump, and then the day just gallops along, diapers and feedings and breakfast and such. I do have time alone once Amelia takes her morning nap, but things feel a little out of control by then. Not knowing how long A is going to sleep makes it difficult to know how much I can do while she naps, so I try to prioritize. Sitting and writing crap in a journal is never at the top of the list.

So, it's hard to "be" in the mornings. I think that this week I will focus on trying to, though. I'm not sure if this will involve trying to find a few moments to write and sip, or throwing myself more fully into whatever the morning brings--maybe both?