So many things.

I don't know where to begin.  Single parenting is so hard.  That's the root of this thought but by no means the end of the story.  But there's so much I can't write here. So many things I have in my head that I can never put down onto paper or into words...I can't even say them out loud.  And the moral of this thought is that I want to write.  Not this post, not in my journal, I want to write for real. I want to be a writer, get published, write more, become compensated for my writing enough to justify that it's all I do.  It'd be the only version of my life that I could truly love.  I love my children and my job but when I shut my eyes, I can only see that yearning to do something more.  To contribute something more, not just to my family, but to everything.  This is all selfish but it's the only way I can make myself get through things that are too hard to see past otherwise.

My younger daughter was bullying another little girl at the daycare at the gym this morning.  I was only 3 miles into a very good run that was going to go on for at least another 2 miles when I got called down.  The thing that bothers me is she's not even 2 years old and she seemed totally happy and harmless when I came in...but they claimed they couldn't put another girl down without my daughter trying to tackle her.  So as soon as I stayed for more than 2 minutes, trying to figure out what to do, my daughter started crying to the point where I knew I couldn't just have a talk with her, put her down, and go back on my merry way.  So we left and came home and I had a good cry on the drive.

Of course, this self-pitying moment let my mind spin out of control until I was thinking the deepest, darkest reasons I have to be sad.  The things I can never write down.  And the only thing that pulled me out of the new, overwhelming despair I'd fallen into, was the thought that my life could be different if I could write.  If I can focus all my extra minutes, every moment I have that isn't consumed by jewelry, children, work, house, if I can really apply myself, then maybe I can pull myself out of this ongoing failure I feel.  I can gain some independence from some things.

Now I'm begging my older daughter to take her nap and threatening her by claiming I won't take her to the pool later, like we had planned, if she doesn't quiet down and fall asleep.  In a few minutes, I need to work on jewelry.  Hopefully that won't take too long because I'd like then to spend some time doing something to dedicate my every free minute to writing.  Writing here counts because I'm committing myself beyond just my own thoughts.

If nothing else, dedicating my time and efforts toward making this lifelong dream a reality always seems to make me feel better in the interim.  So there's always that.  It's good for my mental wellbeing.  Also, I've never felt more drive, more confidence about something being a possibility than I do about this.  So even when every other thought sounds like: "so many people have this same dream that try a thousand times harder and never make it a reality, why do you think you'll be any different?", the in between thoughts are so much the opposite that I know I can't just give up on this.

Time for jewelry.