the contemplative explorations of a farmer, husband, father, human

Welcome.

Because when I drive to pick up my kids from school, when I take a shower, when I load the dishwasher, when I walk the dog, when I lie down in bed at night, my mind is alight with running down the point, and I thought I should get to writing it down.

For years, when I was a single person, I would wake early on weekend mornings to walk down the hill, past the cemetery, over the bridge, through town to the local coffee shop, and I would sit up in the crow’s nest second story and take in the bustle of the cafe, and the hustle of caffeine in my blood, and I would essay to assemble words. Not toward any end, just to tug on a loop of memory and see what happened to the knot.

And most of the time I achieved or received something: a story left to polish, the roots of a poem, something inside me newly discovered; sometimes, most times, simply the high from a dip into creative flow lingering on my person for the rest of the day.

That was my writing practice, my sacred ritual. But when I moved in with my wife, to become spouse and step-parent, then parent in my own right, then home-maker, and side-hustler, I broke the routine, and amongst the piles of laundry and stacks of dishes, between trips to the grocery store and tae kwon do studio, amidst late-night soothings and early morning lunch prep, I haven’t found it again. Maybe I’ve tasted it in social media posts and texts to friends, but I haven’t re-started the habit.

I miss it, and I know in some ways my mental health needs it.

So this blog. Thoughtshed, at once a study of flow toward an eventual body of thought, a casting-off of thoughts, and a place to keep them. A place to tinker, to mess up, to try.

I think blogs are dead–at least, when I tell people I’m a writer, they have stopped suggesting I should write a blog. And I want it that way: there’s nothing to see here. The pressure is off if the bear thinks you’re dead.

Which is to say there’s no pressure here. The goal is to write, write often, daily if I can. The goal is to make the act of writing a sacred act, so sacred it becomes mundane. Even profane, as the writing might be shit.

But it also might slip into the transcendental. There’s a chance.