Sitting staring at a blank blank blank page

I will tell you, some days the words drip easily from the fingers and other days, it's like pulling teeth.  Today, I root canaled the words. 

The reality of writing is to write.  You can call yourself a writer, but unless you write, you're a pretender.   So I'm putting these stupid words here, trying to coax some thought out of my brain other than the thoughts I've had before.  All these blogs, from 2006 to now, and I look at older stuff and wonder, where did my imagination go?  Where did my loopy sense of humor that let me lace what happened today with something else and make it sing? 

Am I overtired or bored or is nothing happening?  Yes. No. No.  Lots happens, but it's teenage stuff and as such, more complicated and less something to expose.  Teens ought to have the safety and security of being able to be adolescents in all its messiness without the exposure of the internet.  So the stories of the day go unsung except for how the fifteen year old discovered he likes to do the dishes if he gets to pick all the songs on Alexa while he does it. I told him he could take Alexa to every room in the house if he wishes. 

Much of parenting teens is biting your tongue, and that includes with the stories you tell or don't tell on a blog.   They jump from wanting to watch cartoons (yes) to asking if we can get cell phones (no) to wanting to play basketball to sleeping in, to ordering pizza to stating they're on a diet, all within five minutes.   They want to learn to drive and are scared to answer the actual phone and talk to a real person.   They love gift cards but fear paying for groceries with cash.   It's a bizarre thing to be a mom to these people who can dance a floss but not floss their teeth, who play video games with aplomb but can't type.   

I'd love to tell you I have a serious point to all this meandering, but I haven't learned it yet.  I only know, as stressful and crazy and contradictory as it is, this time when they're not yet adult but no longer child is both agonizingly and mercifully short.   Enjoy the pizza and the modern music and remember to embarrass them every so often by trying to sing along or dance.  They'll roll their eyes but they'll also appreciate it.   

Teens are like writing on the blank blank page.  You have to love them, you have to work on helping them live and grow up.  You must keep at it even when it's not easy and not fun.  However, if you keep at it, there's a full page, and if you let yourself write, if you let yourself chase down the rabbit hole of thoughts, you'll find some pretty loopy and imaginative elements along the way.   That's how it is with writing.  You become more of a writer by writing. That's how it is with parenting teens, you become more what you must, when you love more each day.