Brain Games

So I spend a lot of time sitting alone with my baby, nursing or whatever. While this is calming, safe, celestial, etc., it's also pretty boring. But I recognize that it wasn't that long ago that I would have loved the chance to sit and think. I've been trying to remember what exactly I promised myself I would think about when this chance came.

I'm pretty sure that at some point I told myself I would think really Good Ideas to eventually put into a really Good Book. Ironically, when there is nothing to do but think of Good Ideas, my head seems stuffed with dumb ones. When I worked parttime at the public defenders office (probably the busiest I've ever been), I know that there were plenty of days that I got ideas for cool crime novels, but I didn't spare myself the time to think about them in that context, much less write about them. I put them off until I had time. Now I have time, but no "zest for the imagination."

But that might not be the problem. There have been plenty of heartbreakingly brilliant writers who had much more boring lives than I do. I have a feeling that if I started writing something, then the ideas would start coming. Maybe that's the rub: I don't have a lot of time to write, I have a lot of time to think. Baby does not like Mom to sit at the computer or behind a notepad. During the hours that Baby is awake, if Mom is not holding Baby, nursing Baby, or playing with Baby, her other acceptable occupations (pushing a stroller, driving a car, etc.) don't exactly lend themselves to writing. They lend themselves to thinking. With nothing to think about, it's hard not to feel like I'm getting stupider.