dwelling in a caffeinated brain

some thoughts on why I write

Hello there, friend. Welcome to Dunham Dwells, where we explore connection and the awkward mid-twenties. Today, a bit of a ramble. Welcome along.

Did I accidentally get a caffeinated beverage with dinner on the way home? Yes. Is my kitchen cleaner than it’s been in what feels like months? Also yes.

It could also be the fall weather today. Seventy degrees in the sunshine with a breeze and I don’t know how anyone feels that and doesn’t suddenly have five times as much energy. Especially on a Friday evening.

I’ve been thinking about writing. I journal most days, and most days it’s shitty rambling that I would never ask anyone to ingest. But I have more in me. My commute is a little over an hour each way, and each day I come up with the kernel of an essay or two, which are put aside for work or because at the end of the day, this pregnant body is tired.

I want to write about growing into my humanity. Life started to race by ages ago, but I refuse to let it run by unmarked. I will not look up when my son is twenty and moved out of the house and wonder: what happened to me in the last two decades? I intend to write it down and attempt to make sense of it, and failing that, have a terribly good appreciation for the meaninglessness.

But I can’t start with today, at least not here. It’s far too fresh. We are all going to be laughing over the intensity of my perceived drama in just a few months. Whenever I do get to scribbling topics to write about, the time between high school and my move back to Virginia always makes the list. That time period includes the great succession of apparent failures that make me want to title my future memoir: This is Not What I Signed Up For.

But even with such time and distance between me and those events, I write myself in circles. I wander without a real sense of purpose through six long years of growing up. Am I trying to simply recount events? Am I wallowing to gain pity? Or do I think myself wise enough to advise or warn others? 

I’ve concluded that I simply want to learn aloud. I will never be a freshman in college or a newly married twenty-one-year-old again, but this life will forever insist on setting me new challenges to overcome, try to outrun, or be run over by. Can writing it out lend perspective to the current season and seasons to come? Either that or we’ll suffer through some mediocre writing together, which will be nothing too revolutionary.

As always, so glad you’re here, and looking forward to what’s next in this little corner of the Internet.

Love,

Amy