Here I present a post about what happens when I don’t want to write and my writing rambles on forever. It’s from a couple of years ago. But this is the perfect example of what goes on in my head.
Know that you were warned before reading! 😂
I don’t have writer’s block. There are a ton of things in my draft folder of ideas to write about. All of the subjects exciting and interesting to me. What I have today instead of writer’s block is,
“Writer’s, I don’t want to do any writing block”.
I just wasted an hour responding to emails (all of which had to do with writing), but I wasn’t really accomplishing anything.
My routine for writing lately is that once I get the kids off to school, the dishes and laundry started, I sit down at my computer and either submit articles to editors or write until noon. During that time I’ve been trying to send out 5 submissions or pitches of articles as well. In the afternoon I come out of my writing trance and attempt to take care of my other responsibilities.
Today?
My husband didn’t go to work. My son hasn’t gone to school, he’s still refusing to get in the shower and I just feel done in. I made myself white chocolate raspberry scones for breakfast to try to perk me up, but instead, I just want my 4th(?) scone and to climb back in bed with a book.
I’m trying to do my actual work and hold to my goal of writing until noon. But I really just don’t want to write. So you’re getting a post about not wanting to write today. While trying to follow through and hold to at least one of my goals for the day. I’m not sure that anything is going to get submitted or pitched today. I’m just writing this post which will probably never be seen by anyone, about not wanting to write. In the hope, it will flip me into wanting to write and I can at least get some writing done today.
Meanwhile, in the background, my son is fighting imaginary dragons instead of getting in the shower and going to school.
You might ask why I’m allowing it. I’m not. But he’s 118 lbs and 5 ft something and I can’t physically pick him up and put him in the shower anymore. What I can do, is withhold his breakfast until he is showered and dressed appropriately. When will that happen today? Only once he is starving.
He’s lost access to all screens which is usually my carrot for such days. Because he stole his tablet yesterday, and he refused to get out of bed and take a shower. He had a doctor’s appointment so he got dressed right before the appointment.
While dropping him off at school, he refused to go in. I got him out of the car and locked the door. Then I walked around the car and let myself in and locked it behind me. I ended up climbing into the driver’s seat from the other side of the car and VERY slowly driving off. He was furious with me. When he went into the school he apparently spent the next half an hour in a massive meltdown. The school safety officer was called for the first time. Eventually, he calmed down. But at the end of the day, he was off again in full meltdown mode.
I find myself wondering if it would be better to send him to a school just for kids with special needs that know how to deal with Autism. He’s perfectly capable of learning, just refuses to go to school or participate in school. He’ll be twelve next week. He still needs to be in school and homeschooling him is not an option. Although he would LOVE it, I would still have the same problem his teachers are having- refusal to do the work. I have enough to deal with that he refuses to do. I can’t take on schoolwork as well. Xanax is already my friend with the things I already get to deal with.
My daughter, I’m trying to get into a new school for next year.
She is in Special Ed as well. Largely because she has dyslexia, and although her reading is caught up to a lower grade level, her math is not. I think it’s largely due to her reading skills not being up to par in 1st and 2nd grade when they did most of their math with word problems. She couldn’t read much at that point, so she really struggled with math. This led her to believe that she wasn’t any good at math. I’ve been fighting that perception for years.
With trying to get her into this new school her current Sped Teacher thought we should retest and see if she could test out of Special Ed. Apparently, the school she will be going to apparently doesn’t have the best Special Ed program and she has made a lot of progress in math this year.
I just read an email from the Sped teacher. She scored horribly on the test but her math scores are some of the highest in her class. Is it testing issues? Is she cheating off someone else’s test? (That would have been me. Math is NOT my forte.) So now I get to decide what we’re going to do. Leave her in Sped? I still want to have a 504 plan in place for her even if we do get rid of the IEP due to her dyslexia.
This reminds me of 4th-grade math when I was in school.
We figured out that when it came time for math, our teacher would start down the row and have us read off the answer to yesterday’s homework. Each person took one problem in turn. Sometimes he would start at the back of a row rather than the front. But he’d always make his way through the class through the rows. We corrected and graded our own math homework.
Being the wise little 4th graders that we were, we realized that we could figure out what problem we would be asked to give an answer for. For that entire year, we didn’t do any math homework. We just did the problem that we knew we would be asked to give an answer for. Then when he asked us for our grade we would make something up, giving ourselves a good grade of course, but not perfect as to arouse suspicion.
My husband has about 14 months left in the National Guard before he has 20 years in and will be eligible to retire.
This past weekend at his monthly drill he had to extend his enlistment or reenlist. We have talked for years that when he had 20 years in, he was getting out. Our kids would be going into their teenage years by that time and I’m not doing that one alone. We were completely on the same page on that. He texts me while I’m at church on Sunday that he has reenlisted for 6 MORE YEARS!!!! Are you freaking kidding me???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The one good thing I’m going to make come out of this is he has more than 4 years left on his enlistment. He can now sign over his military education benefits to me. I’m making him do that. Plus as long as I am going to school full time we’ll get the Army’s basic housing allowance (BAH) every month. That should pay our rent and utilities.
6 more years?!!!!!
Yesterday, after my son had an awful day, my daughter called me on the way home from picking him up, saying her stomach was killing her. She needed me to pick her up. Something else happened that I just don’t even remember. I said I’m done. I took a Xanax made some hamburgers for dinner and despite my husband protesting. To bed, I went.
I was done.
Done.
Done.
It really doesn’t sound like all that much. But the level of stress I have been operating with this year is so unbelievably high. Despite my purposeful ways of reducing it and taking care of me, it doesn’t take much to send me off.
And thus ends my writing for the day.
