As it stands now, my blog is about a year out of date. Recently I’ve had this habit of writing articles on my laptop, stashing them to be edited at a later date, and never making it to this date. The resulting disaster is a year’s worth of content in a “needs editing” folder on my google drive, and a website that crashed after I neglected the updates for too long.
It’s no skin off my back, as my current fan base consists of people who not only know me personally, but find what I do interesting enough to read my work. I’ve taken advantage of this under the radar existence by accepting my blogging as a passive hobby for me to enjoy whenever I want. Nevertheless, at some point I thought this current system to be ridiculous and vowed to clean up my act, take up a lesson in discipline, and put respectable effort into updating my blog.
So this meant creating yet another folder in my google drive with edited articles that needed to be posted on my website . . . a website that crashed after I neglected the updates for too long. Currently my writing has reached a new level of I-don’t-have-time-for-this as I am writing this in my phone’s notepad, to be re-typed onto the computer, filed to be edited, edited, and then filed again to be posted at a later date. To some this may seem like a catastrophe, but for me it’s simple – I’m doing what I can, my way. Regardless of my organization (or lack thereof) I am consistently working on my craft, which is a good thing for humans to do.
Me and my folders were happy trotting along this way for a few months – it was progress. In an effort to be more kind to myself, I gave Leah props for moving forward, no matter the pace. I was content until I measured myself against the American way: bigger, faster, stronger – yesterday.
As a mom (aka just-a-mom) I’ve found this pressure to be ‘something else’ both enticing and irksome. When kids are screaming and bodily fluids are flying, this something else seems a welcome respite. I’ve had many daydreams of cashiering at my local grocery store and lunch breaks. However, when the evening hours emerge and exhaustion feels overwhelming and incessant, the thought of something else feels like a burden. I often think to myself “why should I do something with my life when I barely have time for a shower?”
Most of the time these two worlds stay far away from each other and spare me the drama of an existential crisis, but every now and then do they collide. This happened most recently in the unlikely arena of the doctor’s office.
I went in for a prenatal check-up 8 months pregnant and the office was running behind schedule, so I decided to pace the waiting area in a passive aggressive attempt to display my impatience. As I debated when to walk out, I spotted a children’s book written by my doctor on a kids’ table stashed away in the corner. I was pleasantly surprised that she wrote a book and as I read it, I smiled at the contents. It was a good book, with a good message, and written well.
Finally, the medical assistant called my name and snapped me out of my haze. I followed her to my room still thinking about the book and was happy to discover a different side of my doctor; I was even more thrilled that it was a side we both shared. When she came into the room, I told her about the book and mentioned that I also loved writing. I started to tell her about my blog – the same one that’s down and a year out of date.
I felt myself shrinking as I brought it up and got angry at myself for mentioning it, only to sound like a lazy pipe dreamer. To make matters worse, when she asked what it was about I couldn’t describe it as eloquently as I always imagined myself speaking and said it was about “life.”
She was kind and encouraging. Her next question had me stumbling again.
“Have you ever thought about writing a book?”
I had. Many times. For a few years. To try and save face I lied and said that I thought maybe I would write a book later, not now. I tried to wiggle myself out of the conversation, and to minimize my passion for writing I said I stopped because “I had a kid and I’ve been doing that now.” I looked away for a few seconds as I spoke because it sounded like a sorry excuse as I heard the words leave my mouth. When I glanced back at doc, I noticed that she looked away too with a face I can only describe as boredom, impatience and agitation.
The truth was I hadn’t stopped writing, but I stopped updating my blog because my kid didn’t leave me much time to do anything thoroughly. The first year of Baby’s life was so hard the only thing I had time for was survival. I wrote only for my sanity, the spruced up blog would just have to wait until I was more spruced up myself.
What I felt in the moment was shame. I failed to be more than just-a-mom. Doc gave me a motivational pep talk, and as the day wore on my shame morphed into a passion and drive to change my future, and become all that my potential called me to be. By the time dinner rolled around and Baby was bathed and put to bed, I laid down in my own bed and heaved my achy pregnant body into the only comfortable position I could manage decent sleep in. I let out my normal exacerbated sigh of relief from the day and uttered my final words for the evening:
Fuck that blog.
Then I went to sleep.
Since then, I’ve done the today-is-the-day two-step; waking up with the intention to skip down the ‘right’ path, and falling into survival mode by noon. Every morning I wake, expecting to be myself again, and ready to tackle the world bigger and badder than ever. Yet every day it becomes clear to me that I am still tired, still broken and still putting the pieces of my life back together. And because my blog is an extension of me, it’s currently a tangled mess. Bit by bit she and I will slowly come back to life, and in truth that’s okay, but I can’t help but feel so much angst over everything I’m not – everything besides a mother.
Enough is enough already, when will I ever be enough?