Is there any chance I can actually do this?

In real life, most would characterize me as extremely disciplined. Which I generally am, although not by nature. My true self dreams of sitting in filtered sunlight, reading a not-terribly-highbrow book while snacking on chips and a Diet Coke. Preferably with the ocean’s soundtrack and an onshore breeze. This fact seems to surprise those same people.

I am disciplined not by nature but by necessity. The past three decades required it. I look to the first two years after college, working in a professional setting while maintaining a long-distance relationship that ultimately led to marriage. The early days of supporting my husband’s business, which required me to drive directly from my 9 to 5 job to man the front desk until close (meaning that having dinner to eat in the car required preplanning before leaving the house in the morning, because there was no money to drive through somewhere every day). Having two children under two years old as we stretched again in opening a second business, with a household budget equally stretched, making every moment of naptime or Mother’s Day Out fully productive to keep life running. Menu planning down to each meal of each day in order to successfully navigate everyone’s practices/games/lessons/church activities. Making a “cleaning schedule” for Saturday morning, assigning an exact timeframe to each area of the house and, if I completed that area in a shorter amount of time, giving myself the leftover time to read and snack (a common theme for me).

I wanted it all. A husband pursuing his dream business rather than just doing some job for someone else. Children with a variety of options to develop skills and interests that build brain, body, and spiritual growth. Meals that gave everyone the best chance at good health and happiness. A warm, welcoming, clean home as a place of retreat and rest. A separate business to use creative and strategic skills to financially contribute to the family. A place (emotional and physical) for friends in need to come for peace. An anchor for the family ship in any kind of weather.

Discipline doesn’t help achieve these dreams. These dreams demand it. Discipline says, “If you truly want this, I am the way.” I wanted it. Discipline delivered.

I now occupy a very different reality. With adult children very nearly launched, our household of two ebbs and flows more easily through those dreams. The beautiful outcome of years of discipline is a lightening of its load. With that in mind, I turn to the mirror to see what else lives there – what came before those decades we have moved through. Writing was one such dream, occasionally surfacing across the years but never calling out for its due attention. And here I sit, struggling as new openness and availability battles with a lack of discipline around this particular art and expression.

The primary element – excuse? – that always freezes me into inaction is fear. Why should I write publicly? Isn’t that implying that people should be reading what I am writing? Why would anyone want to read what I write? Even asking that question feels wildly uncomfortable, knowing that it could be perceived as fishing for compliments or affirmation (neither of which is the case). Having grappled with this feeling for years and conveniently finding no good time to come to resolution, I find that good time is now. Do I write because I care what other people think, or because there are words that want to get out and I need a place to put them? Certainly the latter. My husband told me he wishes me to write so that there is a record, in my words, out in the world. A record of what, I ask? Nothing in particular, he says. Just your words. The things you think and say. The air doesn’t hold them; writing does.

So I decide it is time to write. Writing in public, as the internet certainly is, ultimately serves as accountability. If I can learn discipline around things no one loves (cleaning bathrooms?), I can build discipline in this. Starting today.