Since Thanksgiving, I have not been online as much as I am normally. Checking my inbox more intermittently, I am astounded by the number of emails that have flooded my inbox over this shopping holiday weekend.

Every company wants a chance at grabbing our attention. Remember that attention is a basic currency in the online and physical world. When we give our attention to something, we are giving our time, and we must value it as much as these companies do.

When one is feeling uninspired, should they keep writing?

Lately, writing has felt a bit of a chore, and I’ve been asking myself, “Should I keep doing it if it no longer feels inspiring?”

Taking a step back and examining what is really going on, I see that writing is a tool, not what is actually causing the issue. In a sense, it is the messenger or the canary in the coal mine. It is not the act of writing that is causing ill-inspiration – it is life.

And thankfully, I have writing as a tool to help me work through it.

Does writing while less than inspired lead to uninspiring writing? I’m not sure nor is that my judgment to make. The intention of my writing has always been to put out what is happening in my head and heart. If I can continue to do that even when less than inspired, I will have met that intention.

This weekend, I was playing with a new bean bag toss game with one of the kids. They had been on a winning streak all day. During one of our games, I started outscoring them.

They started getting very agitated that they were losing and made many attempts to change the rules of the game to go in their favor. There were many tears. Score sheets were destroyed. The lines from where we each tossed were moved.

This is one of the first times that this kiddo “lost” and I forgot how devastating it is to lose. The pain of losing is something that my body has gotten used to – the tightening of the chest, the immense feeling of being let down and not good enough. But for my little one, it was brand new and uncomfortable.

I did my best to be compassionate while maintaining a firm line on the rules. I reminded myself that the sensation of losing is new and uncomfortable. And at the end of the day, we made it through the new experience together.

I read to my kids every night, and now that there are three of them, often it takes over an hour. I have always held reading to them to be a very important part of our bedtime. Over the last three months or so, I’ve read through nearly the entire Harry Potter series with my oldest and almost always acquiescing to the request of “one more chapter.”

I have very few memories of actually feeling disappointed from when I was growing up. However, I have one core memory of my childhood when I was in bed and I asked my mom to read to me. I must have gotten the idea from school that parents read to kids at bedtime. So one evening, I found a Chinese book with a story about a purple police cat, put it in her lap and asked her to read. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she didn’t read it. I felt like I was missing out, like all these kids in my class were being read to and here I was not.

Because of this, I may very well over-read to my kids. In my attempt to never have my kids feel that disappointment, I have gone the complete opposite extreme. I find parenting is so very much this oscillating pendulum swinging from one extreme to another.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. It was all about food and family, the two things I was most thankful for. There was no way to disappoint me if I had my cousins around me playing card and board games and a table full of delicious food for me to graze through all evening.

Becoming a mom, I have felt a pressure to create traditions around holidays as these are the memories that my kids will hold onto for years.

This was the third Thanksgiving I hosted and with each year, I learn more about how I want to shape the holiday (and also how better to cook a turkey).

Being second generation Chinese American, I did not grow up with a “traditional” Thanksgiving. Mothering in a biracial household, my image of Thanksgiving is not as clear cut. Landing somewhere in the middle is where authentic feels to me. And most importantly are the feelings my kids have about the holidays. It brought joy to my heart yesterday when my oldest expressed how excited she was for the holiday.

While I fumble my way through making Thanksgiving my own, I am reminded I don’t need to be perfect as my kids’ favorite things about the holiday are probably the same as mine – family and food.