Happy Wednesday! With this post, I will have met one of my goals for 2019: to post more days than I did last year. I’ve also eaten dairy, gluten, and sugar free for 16 days. Today’s supper was a bowl of gluten free vegetable pasta with sugar free tomato sauce and dairy free ‘parmesan’ cheese, followed up with a bowl of chocolate/peanut butter coconut milk icecream. I walked on the treadmill, spent some time decluttering old papers, and watched the last of the Tom Baker Dr. Who’s.

But I didn’t work on my doctorate.

I actually haven’t worked on that for a couple of days. (And, yes, I’m using a ‘couple of days’ to mean a very long time). Because even though I usually love playing with letters and words, some days, I just can’t find the words.

Those are often the days that I wish I had been blessed with musical talents of some kind. If I could play the violin or whistle a tune, surely I could get my thoughts across. But my gifting only involves wordsmithing. And some days the words don’t cooperate.

I can totally understand the frustration of the second grader who snaps his pencil and shreds his papers. He’s got so much tangled up inside that he wants me to know – but the words aren’t cooperating. She’s got so much overwhelming emotion stuffed into that little three foot frame but she doesn’t yet know how to harness the magic of scratching a pencil across a piece of paper to make the world feel better.

Because it is magical – reading the right words at the right time. Hearing someone else say exactly what your own heart is feeling. Knowing that no matter how alone you may feel, you really aren’t. The right words can make strangers feel like family. The right words can erase fear, and spread peace like wildfire on a dry, windy day.

But, sometimes, I just can’t find the words.

Sometimes there are no words. The feelings are just too overwhelmingly wordless. The pain is too present or the joy is too sweet. To corral it with words would oversimplify it.

But sometimes you know there are words, there’s just an empty white wall standing in your way. The perfect words are neatly stacked up on the other side of that block but you can’t quite get to them. I’ve seen my second graders come up against that wall. The clock ticks louder and louder and the blank white wall looms overhead impervious to their attempts to graffiti on it.
Often there are tears of frustration, emergency bathroom breaks, and trips to the nurse. None of which really help. They just get you away from the wall for a bit and distract you from thinking about the words waiting on the other side. Though sometimes, while you’re focusing on those other tasks, the words return.

That’s where I am with my doctorate right now. I know the words are there. And I know that at some point I’ll get over the wall to where they are. But I also know that right now, there are a zillion things that it’s absolutely imperative that I be doing that don’t involve typing on a keyboard. Like laundry. I really should go do a load of laundry…

So, again, happy Wednesday. Congratulations on the goals you’ve met and on all of your successes. And as for the things you haven’t succeeded at yet, just keep plugging along. It’s going to be so worth it in the end!