Just thinking out loud

This month is already halfway over, and I can't believe I've hardly written anything on this blog. It's not that it's been particularly busy month--though it has--but rather, it's just been fast. It's that point in the semester when thoughts stay in my head for about fourteen seconds before I'm racing to remind myself about something else and all the forgotten thoughts get emptied into the swirling pit of vague anxiety that hovers somewhere in the vicinity of my diaphragm. Tim is majorly stressed out about school (it looks like this semester might get the best of him again), and I'm realizing just how much I rely on him to keep my anxiety away. It's hard to pull your partner out of their stress sinkhole if you're trying not to slip into your own. We're going to have to take turns or something. One of those tricks of married life we haven't quite figured out yet.

All today I kept thinking about things I wanted to blog about, but I couldn't settle on anything. I actually keep a list of things that I want to write about at some point, but nothing feels relevant without being redundant today. My thoughts are feel like they're chasing their tails, to quote my first graders.

I'm thinking about faith and doubt and cancer and the essay I've been trying to write about it and how I need to get cracking so I can submit it for a writing contest. Thinking about writing and how my friends have kept up with that and are getting published and I'm letting that part of my life slide and plus I think I'm getting dumb being away from school. Thinking about writing for work and wondering how I'm ever going to get caught up and how much work and I can squeeze in over Thanksgiving and wondering if I really want to work over Thanksgiving anyway. Thinking about friends I haven't talked to recently and then about Christmas and wondering how that's going to work out and then jumping to Harry Potter this weekend and a football game and then a birthday party and wait, am I teaching on Sunday? No, I taught last week. I think. Wondering how we're going to get Tim through this semester and if we'll find him a tutor in time and he still needs to register for next semester but he might need a break but that's probably not a great idea but maybe. And then remembering the horror stories I heard in traffic school tonight (stupid speeding ticket) and how I'm grateful that I wear my seatbelt and how I'm never talking on my cell phone while driving again, ever. Rattlesnake, hockey puck, monkey monkey underpants. (That's a Gilmore Girls shout out, in case you missed it.)

Whew.

There's a line in You've Got Mail that I love, and because I love movie quotes and I love getting things right, I looked it up: "Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life--well, valuable, but small--and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So goodnight, dear void."

I don't really want an answer to any of this madness running through my head, though I'm sure someone will read it. Blogging is truly a paradox sometimes, the public bearing of private thoughts. Tonight I just needed a void to empty those thoughts into. So goodnight, dear void.