What the heck?

So where did I go? I start blogging, y'all start to get a little interested and then...just like that, I disappear. It's not that I don't want to blog. I frigging love blogging. I'll blog all day long. I'll blog till the cows come home. It's just that here are the things I'm working on that require my writing time and attention:

1. A tv spec with my tv-writing husband

2. A pitch with said husband

3. Revisions of a novel I wrote in 2003-2004 then put in a drawer in order to focus on having a baby, raising a baby, going back to grad school, working as a therapist, stuff like that.

4. A screenplay. I know, I know, who in L.A. isn't? I don't care. I'm writing one. It may suck, it may rock. I don't care.

5. Several grants for our charter school, including one for an intergenerational e-penpal project that we are launching.

6. Other assorted first chapters of novels or outlines for scripts that I jot down as they come into my brain so I don't forget them.

And of course I'm still full-time momming. Oh, and I'm beyond obsessed with the word game apps on my IPhone. It's messed up how ofte I gaze longingly at my new IPhone, picturing the infinite bank of NY Times crosswords or the Tetris-like game with letters instead of shapes that requires quick spelling - oh how I love quick spelling. I justify my obsession by citing all the studies that show that as people age word games and crosswords prevent memory decline. And I'm about to 40, people, in case I haven't driven that home!

I realize as I glance over the list above, it reads as if I'm somehow blaming you - the fabulous reader, without whom I'm just shouting into the void - for how busy I am. I am not. I am actually thanking you. It has been the act of blogging, coupled with the responses I get from you all - sharing your stories, commenting on mine, giving me feedback - that has catapulted me back into the world of writing. I've never not written, but for years it was grad school papers followed by mental health assessments, therapy notes, grants for non-profits and schools, and long, late-night emails to far-flung friends. It was still writing and, like all acts of writing, filled a part of me that aches to be filled. Not kidding. Not being dramatic. Writing is my meds. If I don't get some sort of writing in during the day, I'm much crankier, insecure, and even borderline depressed.

It was that John Tesh-inspired late-night Maryland hotel room blogging tear that brought writing back to the center of my life (along with my family. Always have to make that clear out of concern that you'll visualize me as some Sylvia Plath / Virginia Woolf mash-up who can't focus on anything but the page. When I'm in it I'm in it. When I close it, I'm full-on mom.)

Since Mid-December, I have re-committed to writing with such gusto - partnering with my husband on these T.V. projects, working up the courage to open that rusty old desk drawer and pull out that rusty old novel, basically throwing my hat back into the proverbial ring. I don't blog much, but only because the 3-4 hours a day I have for writing gets eaten up so quickly by baby steps on all these other projects. Like right now, I have to dive back into the intergenerational grant thingy which is due at the end of the week. Ack. But I just wanted to write a quick post of gratitude. It is this blog, you readers, and my incredible writing group that meets in an incredible wine bar (causing our husbands to call it a drinking group at which we sometimes write) that got my chops going again. So, thank you.