How Did I Get Here?!

This blog.  My blog.  It has been staring me in the face for several minutes here and there throughout my busy days and weeks for many months now.  I would dabble in building and designing it.  Get frustrated because I am essentially “blog-building illiterate”.  The glaring “NO POSTS” would attack me from the page every time I logged in (often forgetting the password because it had been so long).  What exactly did I want to write about?  Didn’t I need a very specific niche?  Didn’t I need to be incredibly amazing at something in particular in order to make my words worthy to be put out there?  There just never seems to be enough time.  I work, I mom, I wife, I life and the clock just keeps spinning and spinning.

Then, this morning, on this blustery Wednesday, February 13^th, my 8 year old son did something unprecedented.  He decided not to play the Xbox this morning with the free time before school.  He chose to come into the kitchen with blank paper and a pencil.  As I washed dishes in my bathrobe with a towel on my head, watching the clock as always, he sat with a grin on his face and I left him to it.  Blow drying my hair in the bathroom, there was a knock on the door and a “MOM, CAN YOU TURN THAT OFF FOR A SEC?”  I turned it off and he handed me a folded piece of paper.  I asked him if he wanted to wait until Valentine’s Day and he said no, that he wanted to give it to me today.  There was a pencil drawn heart on the front with “I Love You” in the center.  The tears started almost immediately when I opened it.  On the right was another heart and “I Love You!”  And on the left was my son’s early Valentines note for me:

Dear Mom,

I love you so much! XOXOXOXOXO.  Thank you for doing all of the cooking and the dishes.  I know sometimes you have a hard time and I make it harder.  But like you said to me yesterday, you are the most important thing in world to me.  I am sorry.

Thank you,

From Lennon

He hadn’t done anything wrong, we had had a great morning.  But this was how he chose to spend his time this morning.  He chose to spend it reminding me that he loves me and apologizing for things that have happened in the past, and will most likely happen in the future.  But he made the decision that this was more important than his Xbox this morning.  And he had listened to and remembered what I had told him yesterday.  This was the greatest gift I ever could have gotten.

And it was eye opening.

Ultimately we choose how we spend our time.  We lecture our kids about spending too much time in front of one screen or another,  we lecture people at work (or are lectured) about how work time is spent and how could it be more productive.  Sure, there are some things we have no control over.  And we are just as guilty of falling prey to various time sucks as everyone else.  But the things and the time that we do have control over, we sacrifice much too easily.  We hand it to social media, to Amazon, to Netflix, to online shopping.  Don’t get me wrong, all of these things are amazing and have improved my life in so many ways, but they also have stolen a little piece of who I am by swallowing whole what small pockets of time I might find that are actually mine.  I think it is time that I reclaim it.  I wanted to start a blog because I am a creative person, always have been.  I’ve always liked to sing and write and perform and entertain.  It was an outlet for me and most of the time other people benefited from my efforts as well.  But this thing called Life just seems to have taken over every nook and cranny of my existence and I just felt like there was no room for Creative Lisa. Or more accurately, no time for her.

Having recently adopted a plant based diet, and really enjoying it, my husband suggested I start a vegan blog.  ME???  I don’t know anything about being vegan.  All of the websites I go to and podcasts I listen to and YouTube channels I watch (potential time suck, anyone?) are so much better than me and know so much more than me.  Who would ever want to read ME?  Enter excuses <here>.  I was terrified.  Where did I start?  What would I write about? No, no, no + too much + I can’t = shut down.  But I continued to cook and eat and sing in the car and think. 

My tag has always been Vocalmama.  It’s very fitting: I sing, I love music, I’m mouthy, somewhat opinionated (gulp), and I’m a mom.  Add the plant based diet persona and we get VeganVocalmama.  As I started thinking about this, it seemed more comfortable, more fitting.  I could write about lots of things regarding different aspects of veganism, music and parenting.  If people like you wanted to read them, great! And if not, well, their loss.

So here I am.  A lesson learned from son on choosing how to spend my time.  I have to find the time for myself, and if I can’t find it, I have to make it.  And yes, the laundry might sit an extra day.  Maybe I write on my lunch break instead of walking one day.  Maybe we make the leftovers that are on their last legs stretch for one more dinner.  Why?  Because without me and the small bit of sanity that I am miraculously able to maintain on a moment to moment basis, this world would be a different place.

So I hope you come back for some more food, music, thoughts and conversation…and hopefully laughs (life is nothing without laughs).

Go have a rock star day.