An Ordinary Post That I Want to be Read Anyway

It's intimidating to be in front of the screen, fingers on keyboard, cursor blinking, after an absence. I've had a lot of excuses not to get blog posts written regularly as of late, and I've made a fair share of excuses when they weren't readily available. But I set aside tonight, saying that tonight I will write. I had three different ideas for a post at different times today, three different topics that came to my head along with two or three sentences that sounded just right. They're all three of them gone. Just gone. I jotted down those ideas on scraps of paper, paper that didn't come home with me; now I'm left with the ordinary.

It's the ordinary that makes this intimidating. After a long period of not writing much for public consumption, I feel like I should have something of huge significance to say. If I'm going to trouble you with words on a screen and ask you to spend your time on them, they should be extraordinary. They should be revelatory. They should be immediately quotable in pieces and possess great depth as a whole and be shared and liked and retweeted and favorited. But I don't have that. I just have the ordinary.

But the ordinary moves too. The ordinary makes a statement. More accurately, the ordinary is a reminder, an inconstant but relentless reminder to me the writer and you the reader that this is what I do. On good days and on bad, when inspired and when not, when attempting to change hearts and minds (my own included) or just getting words down, I am here. And writing is what I expect from me.

Doing the ordinary is sometimes, or perhaps most times, a greater sign of commitment. When you do the ordinary, you do it without the expectation of being impressive. You do it with the likelihood that you will not be praised, that you may not even be noticed; but you do it anyway, because that's who you are and who you want to be.

You do the ordinary in no special way on no special day - it's not a birthday or an anniversary or a first day. In fact, it's probably a Wednesday.

The ordinary is getting your kids breakfast every morning. Boring old breakfast: the same tired cereal from the same tired stack of bowls with a cup of juice fifteen minutes before walking out the door. You do it because you are Mom, or Dad, or Grandma, or Grandpa, and that's who you want to be. So you do that, and you know you'll do the ordinary old laundry later, one more unnoticed time, just like yesterday, because you are making a statement of love in the ordinary.

The ordinary is smiling. Just smiling. To walk into your office or your classroom or the grocery store or your kitchen, wherever it is that you will first see people in the morning, and smile - smile despite the car trouble or the rain or the work or the crappy job you're stuck in or the disappointment from your last ordinary act. That smile communicates devotion.

The ordinary is picking up your husband's socks (thanks, Dear). Or cleaning up supper. Or being the first one in the marriage after a disagreement to break the touch and/or silence barrier by telling a joke or asking a question.

The ordinary is practicing when no one is watching, praying where no one will see you, being excellent at a report or an assignment that few will see, and taking a minute to text a friend rather than default to checking Facebook or Twitter or Trivia Crack.

No one is going to have much praise for the ordinary. But the ordinary will make you who you want to be. The ordinary will begin or save a relationship. The ordinary, performed often enough, will speak of extraordinary character.

And so I write ordinary words tonight. No crafty metaphors. No meticulously woven connections. No illuminating diction. Just words. But my ordinary words that few will read remind me: this is who I want to be.