The Internet Made Me Do It

Over the past few weeks, I've been contemplating post-graduation life.  Most of my life will continue on unchanged.  I will still be a stay at home mom.  I will still be married to the most wonderful man in the world.  I will still spend a good part of my day at home, keeping the baby in his routine and doing miscellaneous chores.  Hopefully, the weather will eventually turn warm and sunny, and we can go to the zoo sometimes but mostly life will continue on as before.

However, even though my life will not change that much after Saturday, as long as I was in school, that was what I was Doing. 

As in,

"What do you Do?" 

"I'm a student." 

What is my answer to that question now?  Being a stay at home mom is perfectly acceptable.  But I want my life to be bigger than the 1500 square feet of my house.  I want to think about Things.  I want to have Ideas.  At the minimum, I want to be able to talk about more than today's guest on Ellen, that cool thing on Pinterest, and the color of my baby's poop, so people will still invite me to their parties.

The Internet, in all its wisdom, directed me here, back to my long-neglected blog.  First I saw a link that my friend Emily posted on Facebook to an essay called Why You Should Write Daily.  The author didn't suggest that you might suddenly become a famous author with a movie deal if you write everyday.  Rather, he wrote things like,

• "Writing helps you reflect on your life."
• "Writing clarifies your thinking." 
• "Writing is a good skill to have in our digital age."

And other such mundane things. I realized that any fool could put a few words on a page.  And if nothing else, writing regularly will make me more articulate and give me one more skill to bring to whatever challenges come my way.

Even more exciting, he wrote: "Writing regularly forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas."

I appreciate that he classified finding ideas as A Very Important Problem. He suggested that the solution is to pay attention.  I am hoping that writing regularly will help me pay attention--to the articles I read in magazines and on Facebook, to both the funny and profound things people say, to the tedium and wonder of being a mom, to surprisingly good recipes, and to whatever else crosses my path.

I have written what I was told to write in response to what I was told to read for the last four years.  Now, I have the wonderful gift of creative license.  I can write about anything I want!  I can learn about anything I want!  The overwhelming feeling that produces in me is captured by one of my favorite comics ever, here. I especially like these two frames*:

What will happen now?  Will I write about wookies and mermaids? Will I write about ontology and epistemology? We'll see, but no matter what, I will write something.

The internet had more to say on this topic, which I will reference on another day (probably tomorrow).  But for now, what I am Doing is writing.  Not because I will ever be a great novelist and not because I can't not write.  But because I want to be a better person.  I want to think about things beyond the four walls of my house.  And I want to stick my mitt out and catch some of those things.



*This whole comic is funny and spot on.  Another great line: "We need to add comments to EVERY page on our website to create a community because ... community!"