How am I doing?

Most of my friends and some of my family know I have a blog. Some of them read it. All of them tell me how I should keep in touch more often. Even the ones who read it regularly never comment on the blog, or they mention it in passing when they finally pin me down on the phone.

Mostly people call me and say: "I never hear from you, but I hear from your mom (or your other friend or your husband) that you have a lot going on. How ARE you?"

Maybe people just don't find my writing very entertaining, or what I share here seems withholding in some way. It is true that the minutiae of my life is not chronicled here. But how I am doing overall seems pretty well covered if you are paying attention.

I'm contemplating my life and my art and my identity and my worth. That's how I am. I'm thinking about how the world in my head sometimes gets mangled when I try to lay my hands on it and bring it to fruition. I'm wondering if I get points for good intention when I try to be of comfort to others and end up being inadequate. I'm wondering how I can be getting a bunch of things I have worked hard for and still find ways to feel like I am not enough for the world.

I'm thinking about the nature of motherhood and wife-dom and womanhood and lover-ness and artistry. I am pressuring myself to fit all of that into the crucible that is my limited 24-hour day.

Is the real question "Are you cracking under the pressure?" because a lot of people tell me that they could never juggle the number of plates I have spinning on a daily basis. I have been known to hold down multiple jobs and freelance writing gigs and still feed my family and write notes for whatever creative writing projects in the margins. I have had two pieces of paper on my desk: one with a diagram of the nucleotide bases in a genome that codes for a specific amino acid or some such and another with a heartrending and almost too personal to share bit of poetry about how much I still long for my dead grandmother's hands on my fevered brow. Ambidextrous me, I drink coffee lefty so I can write righty. Little A imitates me by putting her play cell phone to one ear, while juggling a book, a teddy bear and a sippy cup. She mutters, "Yeah, me too." into the phone.

So, am I cracking? You mean more than usual? Aren't we all?