In Search of Joy

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So today is day one on the search for joy, how am I feeling? Shocked actually, when did I forget to play? How does one forget to play? Kids do it all the time, they will be sitting on a newly vacuumed floor; when all of the sudden their fingers start to dance across the carpet drawing in lines and shapes and before you know it a piece of art work that rivals the early works of Picasso is drawn on my floor and 30 minutes have flown by. What have I done during that 30 minutes… picked up the kitchen for the 100^th time and walked by them thinking great the lines in the carpet are messed up, couldn’t the house stay clean for 20 minutes!

To be honest I am mostly scared what if I lost it, that unnamed thing that allows children the ability to play, what if I can’t find it? What if years of being the “good wife and mother” sucked it out of me? What if I fail? I keep hoping that even if I do fail I will have learned something of value. Reforming a Type A girl is never easy or painless.

I am not sure quite where I lost the ability to lose myself in moments of pleasure. Did it happen when I was a kid and was told I needed to sit and be quite? Did it happen as a teenager, sitting in a group of my peers judging someone else? Did it happen on the day I discovered I was pregnant at 16? I am sure it is a web made up of all these, however I am personally leaning to getting pregnant and then married at 16. I was so concerned with doing it right, not letting anyone down anymore than I already had, and for god’s sake not messing up this beautiful little soul, I forgot how to play. Yes of course, I have played with all of my kids for hours on end, so you may ask well that was fun right? Why of course but it is also something good mothers do, another chore amongst the list of chores. Do you get where I am going, there is a difference between doing something because you have to and doing something just because it is fun and you want to.

On with the point, I have been on a journey of self discovery for the last three years. Lots of lessons, tears and hard work, however letting go and playing now this may be the hardest lesson to date. I am sure that it will start with a to do list, what good mom doesn’t have to do lists, but I am hoping that the fun is like a muscle the more I practice the easier it will get and after all I have 2 little souls that are more than willing to help me with this part.

Why am I blogging this? Well because I like to write it is healing, most of the time effortless, and a barrel of monkeys kind of fun. It is fun I rarely do it because I get caught up with the judgment of how it should be, where the colon goes, should a period be here or should I use a comma instead, all the rules. I am always getting stuck in the rules. Now, for both of our sakes I will try to not make huge errors when blogging but I am learning to have fun. When I was a kid I could sit and write stories for hours with no care in the world of fragmented sentences and misplacement of punctuation so if you are looking for grammatically correct writing stop and exit. This is my place to rediscover my passions and to share my little lessons in joy. Please forgive all my little/big mistakes. You might even find yourself laughing that while soaking wet I mistyped and said something totally archaic and wrong.

As for the fun today….the sky looks a little cloudy with a chance of rain, maybe mud puddles will be where I start today?