When We Were Blitzed With Suck

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This has been a rough year for my family. Our sweet Granny passed away, or as they're fond of saying in the South "went to be with the Lord," shortly after New Year's Day. Granny first belonged to Brenda but I adopted her quickly for my own. Pro-tip: You can never have too many grannies in your life. Especially ones like Doris.

Dying Isn't For The Faint Of Heart

Neither is watching someone do it. Besides wrestling with my own emotions and grief, I was faced with helping Brenda through hers. Thankfully she had her parents and sisters to lean on. The real difficulty was helping my children make sense of it all. I can still hear them sobbing when we told them Granny would be dying very soon. The five of us hugged each other and wailed in an eery sort of unison. Looking back I think their initial display of grief was more in response to seeing Mommy and Daddy cry than a firm understanding of what the future would hold.

The time leading up to Granny's passing is still a blur. I remember packing for the trip at break-neck speed. I remember facetiming with Granny while she was in the hospital. "I'm fine with it, Youngins!" she kept saying in between labored breaths. "I'm fine." Pause. "With it." Brenda and I held each other and I told her through my tears, "You gotta be fine with us not being fine with it, Granny!"

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to take the ones we love for granted? It's practically effortless, really. I can't count the number of times I've done it with people I love, like my own mother, for example.

Speaking of which, it's time to play a little catchup. The rest of this article is an open letter to my mother, Debi Ames, whom I don't want to take for granted.

Hi Mom!

When I asked you to come and support my family through this difficult time, you dropped everything and booked a flight immediately. We didn't have a plan. We didn't know if it was for 3 days or 3 weeks. All you knew was we needed you and that was enough.

Thank you.

You arrived and immediately jumped into action. Brenda, Sydney, Savannah, and I were able to attend Granny's funeral and I was able to spend time focused on just my girls, without being distracted by a 3 year old boy doing 3 year old things, because you took care of him for us.

Thank you.

You helped the kids and I make the 5 hour road trip back to Atlanta, while Brenda stayed with her family. Enough said.

Thank you.

Once we got back to the city you became a surrogate home-school mother for well over a week. You executed daily curriculums for the girls while helping potty train Elliot. You cooked and cleaned and did laundry and changed diapers and shopped for groceries and emptied the litterbox. You ferried the girls to home school academy for a day of science labs and humanities. You even made it to violin practice on time.

You took very, very good care of me and my family so that my wife could spend invaluable time with hers.

Thank you.

When Brenda returned, you continued to stay and help in a hundred little ways.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sad for the loss of Granny for Brenda's sake, for my kid's sake, and for mine. But I'm thankful for the time we've had with you. When life got hard and we were blitzed with suck you came through like a hero. I never doubted you would, but that doesn't make it any less precious to behold.

Mom, I love you.

And thank you :-).

Blog Challenge Review - Week 1

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Last week I announced that I would be subjecting myself to somewhat of a blog challenge by committing to write 5 times a week leading up to a speaking engagement in March. Let's see how I did my first week!

Weekly Debrief

Posts

My talk will cover equal parts content strategy (what to write about) and creative inspiration (how to write it).

Where Did I Find Inspiration?

I found inspiration in a few places. One article was written from an old draft. I have about 50 concepts that I'm always adding to or pulling from. The Never Forgive And Forget post was one such draft that came from a fragment of an email I wrote to a friend a few years ago.

Two of my articles were inspired by photos. I like to dig through photos to remind myself of stories, strong opinions, and life lessons. One was from a visit to the planetarium with my kids, the other came straight from my wife's facebook page.

I totally cheated and posted a link to an 8BIT article on project management one day, instead of writing a new article on my personal blog, but I think this is still a legitimate move. The article was freshly written by me and describes a communication technique that is useful beyond the stated application.

Finally, the article about body language was a current event and came directly from the trenches of parenting.

How Did I Put Inspiration To Action?

Announcing on my blog, twitter, and Facebook that I would be writing (almost) daily was a big help to me following through. Public accountability can me quite effective!

A number of people commented (and tweeted, and facebooked) to encourage me and say nice things about my writing, and this really gave me a boost!

The post about body language practically wrote itself because I wrote it while the event was still fresh, right after my kids went to bed that night. I should I do this more often.

Further Thoughts

I found myself thinking more about writing. Getting into the groove has made a difference in how I think throughout the day. I found myself contemplating post concepts, titles, etc. more than I have in a long time. This felt good!

I had so many good ideas throughout the week but I didn't write most of them down and now they are lost. I need to do better at this. It's more than a little ironic considering I helped invent (and write the marketing copy) for this product here called #notes.

I found myself struggling with the blog being too "me focused," and not adding enough value to others. I've always wanted the blog to be about me and my family, and to be for me and my family, but I may change the focus and intent if it broadens my writing horizons and helps me get better at writing.

Knowing your audience is an important step in the right direction! I'm not sure I know mine yet.

That's all for now, on to Week 2!