learning – Page 3 – gianna soderstrom

I have good days and bad days.

On my good days, I think It is so good for me to blog! I am taking back my writing – I’m not giving in to the fear that I’m a horrible writer. I’m writing and publishing it and no matter who reads it, I’m writing with courage and joy and it’s so, so wonderful!

On my bad days, I think Why are you writing a blog? You’re years late to the game. You’re just writing here because you’re afraid of writing an essay and submitting it for publication, aren’t you? You’re scared! This blog is just an excuse – so that when people ask about your writing, you aren’t empty handed, you don’t have rejection slips to show them, you have this, your blog! This is a cop-out from doing anything real, anything that takes guts!

I keep trying to turn the bad days into good days by reminding myself of the encouraging thoughts.

The truth is – and truth is the ground upon which I can stand through any day – the truth is that this is a safe place. It’s a place where I can learn to enjoy writing again, because there’s no pressure. Nobody who has read and reviewed and loved or critiqued my writing is reading this, judging by the WordPress stats. And I love that.

I can write and publish and write and publish and if nobody ever knows, that doesn’t mean I’ve done nothing. I’ve written.

So that is why I am blogging. I want to show the negative voices of fear who’s boss. And maybe, one day, one of the writers I love will tell me, “Actually, this is good. You writing, you claiming back joy and just writing. Even the words are good.” A girl can dream.

On one hand, this blog doesn’t take a lot of courage. That’s important to me. I need this simple space to put the love of writing back into practice. But I want to write with courage too. So to you, reader, I’m making a promise. I will write and submit an essay, or poem, or story. Something. I’ll do some writing that takes guts and a tough skin. I need both sides of this craft; the safe, and the wild.

Erik is crawling. He used to scoot around on his blanket from one end to another, searching out the toys I’d scattered across it for him (although they were only ever an alternative to looking for any charging cords we may have left out.) Now he’s on hands and knees, back and forth from one end of the house to the other and almost as fast as me.

He crawls to the washing machine to watch the bright clothes swishing behind the door. He crawls to the reflective oven door and leans towards himself until he bumps his forehead on the glass. He crawls to the broom and touches the bristles that stick out at odd angles. He crawls to the bedroom and stares at the mirror; opens the door, closes the door, opens, closes. Again.

I love it.

He’s exploring and learning and searching and in all this I get to guide him. We go outside on the warm days and he crawls across the patio from one end to the other, touching the grass and marveling at the texture.

“Grass!” I say, “It will turn bright green in the summer, and you’ll learn to run across it barefoot.”

He picks up dried foliage from last fall.

“Leaves!” I say, “They grow green on the trees in the spring, and then in the fall they turn colors and fall down. We’ll make piles of them and jump into them, and hear them crunch under our feet.” I crumple them in my hand for him, “Crunch!” I say. He crawls back to the other end of the patio.

It is all a marvel to me. He smiles when I help him stand. He stares seriously when we go outside. He grins and giggles when I play crawling games and call him over to me. He is piecing together the world. I am piecing together parenting; stringing together happy moments to balance out the hard ones. We learn together.

That is what most of this life is, after all.

Tag: learning

reasons and things

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