It's July, 2020. My first baby is ten years old. We're in a weird "not in lockdown but still not back to normal" state of the world. Everything feels unsettled.
Can't you tell?
I started this blog when the girls were still babies. I wrote about funny things they did, and funny things they said. I wrote about pacifiers and potty training and the endless topics that come up in conversation when you have babies and toddlers. Random parenting stories about babies and toddlers were - are - relatable, funny, and easy to share.
Random parenting stories can be harder to come by when you have "big kids". They're still cute and funny and full of interesting anecdotes to share, but they're also their own people with their own personalities, and the parenting "catch all" just wasn't working for me. I mean, I look back at what I was writing in 2019, and I was all over the place. I had toy reviews, random mom stories, book reviews, home and parenting tips and tricks, dance mom stuff, homeschool musings, curriculum review, EVERYTHING. I mean, I may as well have thrown in some physics research. I didn't know who wanted to read this mess. Actually, I do know. No one. No one was interested in my scattered brain.
Random parenting stories can be harder to come by when you have "big kids". They're still cute and funny and full of interesting anecdotes to share, but they're also their own people with their own personalities, and the parenting "catch all" just wasn't working for me. I mean, I look back at what I was writing in 2019, and I was all over the place. I had toy reviews, random mom stories, book reviews, home and parenting tips and tricks, dance mom stuff, homeschool musings, curriculum review, EVERYTHING. I mean, I may as well have thrown in some physics research. I didn't know who wanted to read this mess. Actually, I do know. No one. No one was interested in my scattered brain.
And so I pushed pause.
I needed to focus and write with some organization. But...how?
Do I want to go full on dance mom stories and advice?
Homeschooling curriculum and planning?
Stories of raising bigger kids and tweens?
I used to love doing reviews - could I go back and do that?
Did I want to combine all these, working into a "many faces of me" thing? Yeah! That sounds good!
I wasn't sure. Every time I thought I'd found a path, I second guessed myself. I have many, many notebooks where I tried to puzzle all this out. I made lists of what I wanted to cover on each topic, and I planned how I'd organize myself. But the fact that I couldn't really settle paralyzed me. If I was puzzling it out in notebooks, I was "working on it" without actually having to do anything.
I was also - and still am - writing for different sites in the interim, and trying to balance the time I could invest. I needed to look at the time I could dedicate to writing, then figure out how to portion that time out between writing I did for others and writing I did for my own site.
Then, just as I thought I'd figured that all out, things changed. I stopped writing for one site and started writing for another, and the adjustment period took me more time than I anticipated. The style of writing I was asked to do was different. Not bad, just different. And I fell victim to the "I don't have the time right now to work out my own stuff, and I don't want to start until I have everything worked out".
And then...the world turned upside down. And shut down. And there's no dance, which means I don't have those few hours when the girls are in class and I have time to myself. And everyone is homeschooling, but not really, and I'm writing more for other sites in the time I don't have about how to get through this. And everything I wanted to write about that isn't pandemic related seems trivial.
I needed to focus and write with some organization. But...how?
Do I want to go full on dance mom stories and advice?
Homeschooling curriculum and planning?
Stories of raising bigger kids and tweens?
I used to love doing reviews - could I go back and do that?
Did I want to combine all these, working into a "many faces of me" thing? Yeah! That sounds good!
Wait, wasn't that what I had been doing?
And wasn't the whole revamp because writing with a "many faces" angle was super scattered?
Right.
Well, shoot.
Well, shoot.
I wasn't sure. Every time I thought I'd found a path, I second guessed myself. I have many, many notebooks where I tried to puzzle all this out. I made lists of what I wanted to cover on each topic, and I planned how I'd organize myself. But the fact that I couldn't really settle paralyzed me. If I was puzzling it out in notebooks, I was "working on it" without actually having to do anything.
I was also - and still am - writing for different sites in the interim, and trying to balance the time I could invest. I needed to look at the time I could dedicate to writing, then figure out how to portion that time out between writing I did for others and writing I did for my own site.
Then, just as I thought I'd figured that all out, things changed. I stopped writing for one site and started writing for another, and the adjustment period took me more time than I anticipated. The style of writing I was asked to do was different. Not bad, just different. And I fell victim to the "I don't have the time right now to work out my own stuff, and I don't want to start until I have everything worked out".
And then...the world turned upside down. And shut down. And there's no dance, which means I don't have those few hours when the girls are in class and I have time to myself. And everyone is homeschooling, but not really, and I'm writing more for other sites in the time I don't have about how to get through this. And everything I wanted to write about that isn't pandemic related seems trivial.
And I decided to extend the pause.
But I've realized in the last few months that I miss this space. I'm not ready to abandon it for good. No matter where else my writing lands, I want my little corner of the internet to stay.
So, while I have made no final decisions on direction, my lovely and dedicated writing time has been completely thrown out the window, and I'm generally feeling uneasy and stressed...
I'm back.
But I've realized in the last few months that I miss this space. I'm not ready to abandon it for good. No matter where else my writing lands, I want my little corner of the internet to stay.
So, while I have made no final decisions on direction, my lovely and dedicated writing time has been completely thrown out the window, and I'm generally feeling uneasy and stressed...
I'm back.
