Writing

Yesterday I went to a workshop at Grub Street called "So you want to be a writer in 2018?" I don't know where I want to go with writing, but I do know I enjoy it. I love to read, I like to be creative, and I'm curious to see where I could go with writing. I'm going to be on the lookout for fiction writing classes in 2018, at the library or Grub Street or somewhere else.

Barriers

What keeps me from writing?

Fear
Fear of what people will say
fear no one will say anything.
Fear of looking dumb, not having the "right" opinion
Fear of sounding dumb
Fear of having no new thoughts, nothing to say
Fear of causing someone to worry about me
Fear of making someone mad

Forgetting
I should start carrying around notecards like some famous writer I heard of, maybe Anne Tyler

Complacency
I'll do it tomorrow...

I heard Nora Roberts say once that you can fix bad writing, but you can't fix not writing.

So here's to writing!

School Starts

After 2 years of homeschooling, both Micah and Luke chose to go back to school. For various reasons, it felt like a good time to try it again. One way that I want to be a participant in my neighborhood is through having my kids in the public school system. The boys have indicated having some independent space may be good for them.

We haven't been in the area long and felt like we were flying blind. So we put into the public school lottery system, both kids got into the same school (not a guarantee here in Boston), it was walking distance, and we were off to the races. It was a surprisingly good start. I thought Luke would hate it and refuse to go. The first day he balked, hard, and I halfway expected him to come home in the middle of the day, but by pick up he was beaming. He told me he'd seriously underestimated school! So we went to Dunkin' Donuts, 'cause when in Rome or whatever.

Beach Vacation During a Hurricane

Long before we decided to move to Boston, we had planned a beach vacation with my family. Even after I figured out that school in Boston starts after Labor Day (y'all, those last 2 weeks before school started were looooong), I felt that with the boys in 2nd and 3rd grade, it was fine to skip a week of school for family vacation. Even with hurricanes causing such serious riptides and undertow that we didn't swim in the ocean all week, the trip was well worth it.

Hurricanes Irma and Jose didn't keep us off the beach. We had 2 days of a little rain, but it was still so fun to walk on the beach, visit the pier, the aquarium, and swim in the house's pool.

In an amusing twist, we found TONS of sharks' teeth. Not so surprising, hm?

This trip, I noticed how independent my kids have gotten. The older kids had some space on the bottom floor where they could go play, and they learned to shoot pool. It was also not uncommon to find 3-5 kids scattered about the room reading to themselves. And we taught everyone to play Exploding Kittens.

Flying into NC was an odd experience. It was the same airport we used to fly home into, but we didn't have a house we were going to. Instead of our car in the parking lot, we went to get a rental. I wasn't really sure how to handle visiting everyone, should I plan a night out that people could come to if they wanted? Did anyone even want that? Would anyone be miffed if they found out later I'd been in town for 24 hours and didn't let them know? I wasn't sure, but I was tired, so I decided to just lay low. I need to figure out sometime how to maintain friendships, in whatever way I can.

We've been here a month!

Welcome to my new site! I'll be writing about our life and my thoughts here. As of today, we've been living in Boston for one month. It feels both like a long time and like no time. Most of the time it feels like we are still on vacation. We're not fully unpacked and we are just now hanging up pictures.

Running has been one of the ways I settle in to a place. I love to run over to the pond at sunset, it's so peaceful. I also enjoy running up and down side streets and looking at the architecture. Plus I never know when I'm going to see the 3 turkeys that live in our neighborhood.

We've been to the beach twice, to JP Licks for ice cream more times than I can count, Walden Pond, Micah started karate, the library, a church, museums, the movies, and Legoland. The boys have opted to try public school again, so we registered with the school system. However, school assignment is a bit complicated here and they aren't guaranteed a close school (or even the same school), it's whatever schools have openings. I'm not willing to bus them all over town, so we might have to give that more thought. I love the weather, rarely humid and always beautiful in the evening, the food, and finding new and random things to do every week. We've gotten a lot done in a month.