Drafts and Dandelions

A New Beginning

I want to be more like a dandelion.

A picture I found on my old photo a day blog from over a decade ago. I was so happy with it. I think I entered it in the fair. Don’t remember if it got anything.

I have a theory that the only reason people hate dandelions is because they're invasive. If they weren't, people would spend a lot of time and effort trying to grow them. Certainly the roots are hard to remove, but the dandelion flowers themselves are actually quite delightful. Why do they get so much hate?

(If you love dandelions, comment and let me know! So far, until I recently found out my friend Eilidh loves them even more than I do, I never really heard anyone besides me delighting in them other than children.)

I suppose I am like a dandelion. Cheery, yet a bit too invasive for some people.

(I hate that I want to put an emoji there.)

But I aspire to be more like them in other ways.

I want to grow even when my whole life has been disrupted. I want to keep coming back, producing fruit even after what I've produced before has been mowed down. I want to be bright and cheery. I want to grow where others aren't growing, quickly, surprising people with how quickly I've grown. I want to be useful, with abilities that other people didn't even know I had. (Ever met someone who ate dandelions?) I don't want to be needy. I want to grow no matter what the conditions around me are like. I want to bring joy to people - even when I'm dying. I want to keep springing up, unconcerned about what others think of me, just continuing to do what I've been designed to do. I want to be soft. I want to have a consistent character, to be easily identified. I want to remind people of sunflowers.

I could go on, but I've probably lost you already.

This year for Mother's Day, my husband surprised me by setting up and designing a substack for me and importing my old blog posts into it. I was surprised and excited.

And then I started to think. My most recent post was almost 7 years ago. I was new to motherhood and marriage. And really, I hadn’t posted frequently since before I was married. Those did sometimes include pictures of my teenaged future husband. (Imagine another smiley face.)

They're full of lots of pictures and lots of words. They're cringy. Do I want them connected to my blog now? The author of those blog posts feels like a different person living a different life. I'm an adult now, writing adult things that perhaps even strangers will read. My blog before was mostly a personal journal that I could add pictures to and didn’t care if my friends read. Might as well have been Creed’s blog.

(Pretty excited about that one. It may be the first pop-culture reference I’ve ever written. Usually my references are unpopular-culture.)

And then I remembered my title. Drafts. I'm writing about a life seeking improvement, seeking maturity. Drafts are about getting things down, doing something, starting something so that you can make it better.

So maybe I'll change it later, but what would be more appropriate than having the writing of my youth in the archives of my current work? It's symbolic of what I desire to communicate.

However, I will warn you. You could spend a lot of time reading old things I wrote. I don't recommend it.

I certainly hope I have improved. Most of my previous writing was over 10 years ago. It feels crazy that I can say that. It doesn't seem that long ago, and I don't feel that old. There are only a few things that I believe are good, and most of those are the literary ones. I still mostly like my poems. Some of my spiritual posts have good content, though some aren’t well-written.

I am not going to promise you anything about frequency of posting. (Is that what you call Substack articles?) I am working hard at home. I love writing, but it is not my job or my priority - at least at the moment. I started this at Mother’s Day, and here I am at Father’s Day before making my first submission.

I also do not make any firm commitments to eliminating the weaknesses of the past. I feel like a different person, but I am actually the same person plus experiences and choices, and identifying a problem (such as being too wordy) is only the first step of fixing it. I’m not sure I’ve taken any others yet.

I refuse to put in an emoji just because I don’t know if you realized that was funny.

I also don’t promise to remove jokes that are only funny to me. (But I will try to be funny enough not to need emojis….)

We shall see if I’ll add pictures (but…if you know me you’ll be surprised if I don’t). I don’t know if anyone besides my husband will read this. But that’s okay. I’m writing for me. As I wrote in a silly blog post years ago with quotes about writing, “How will I know what I think unless I read what I’ve written?” I’m writing for myself, because I want to be thoughtful and I want to grow.

In interest of creating drafts in the pursuit of growth, and not being excessively wordy, I’m going to push send. Metaphorically, that is. I think the button actually says continue.

I hope that if you join me on this journey, these notes will pop up in your path like an unexpected dandelion, bringing a bright spot of joy to your life, encouraging you to send your roots deep.

The world could use some more dandelions.