X… | #AtoZ #LetterX #nonfiction

…is a hard letter to come up with a word for, so I’m not even going to try.

Hi! I know you stopped by looking for an A-Z post of a short story, or perhaps the craft of writing. Perhaps you even looked so far as to see that my theme is “Catching Up.” Well, while I did spending a couple of days “catching up”, so at least on that point I’m on theme, there may actually be no fiction or writing talk.

This post is not going to be about the letter X. Sorry, not sorry.

I have finally wanted to write in the past couple of days. It’s so nice to feel like that again. I lost that feeling in January, and never got it back. It’s now nearing the end of April, and it’s creeping back. ❤ Lovely.

I am not going to try to think about what I want to write. I am not going to plan. I have a few phrases in the “Quarantine Journal” I started when our company went to work-from-home. I like these, and when I get stuck or too in-my-head, I find myself going back to them. I keep adding, too, so this list may not be the final list when the journal is done.

Ooh, you know who else had “rules” like this? Gibbs!

1. How can I help others?
2. What am I grateful for?
3. The plan is to not have a plan.
4. Why not?
5. Other people’s opinions are none of my business.

So far, it’s a good list. In my journal, it’s got heart-shaped bullet points because it’s me, but I like the rules idea. That was always a great thing whenever someone mentioned another “rule”. I know there’s a website out there that has cataloged as many as were mentioned. Possibly more than one.

So this morning when I woke up, grugingly, just before 6 a.m., when my youngest was also awake and in my chair (ARGH), I went to rule number 3.

Not immediately, of course. I struggled with going back to sleep, and then I struggled with the fact that my child was in my spot, the secondhand recliner that’s in the process of falling apart that everyone loves. And then I struggled with why did I even want to do this? I had prepped JY to not encourage me to go back to sleep if I managed to wake at 6 am, or even 5, but not especially well on the why.

I had to think about why I wanted to be up. Rule 4 doesn’t fit well here, because Why not? is more of a “Why not go back to sleep?” kind of question, and boy, does sleep sound really good right now when I was awake until almost midnight.

But no. What was the plan? To sit in the chair. That wasn’t the whole reason though. What was the reason? To be productive. Write! I wanted to write. “Hand me my Chromebook,” I ordered, and JY complied, in surprisingly good spirits. “You seem agressive,” JY mentioned when I ripped into the pink-zippered case and tossed it aside. “Determined,” I said, still mostly asleep. “There’s a difference.”

And that is how I came to be here, on entry X, the Friday before it’s due.

Which, by the way, how did I get almost all the way through April? The last I checked, I still had 10 days left.