Labels

I am not good at labels. Back when I wrote extremely vague, emo poetry, I almost never titled my work, because I suck at titles. (Conversely, the title to my master's thesis is embarrassingly long and awkward. I guess since I was forced to give something a title, I decided to title the hell out of it.) I find titles too confining. That's why the title of this blog is so vague. I don't know what kind of blog it is. I don't even know what kind of blog I want it to be.

It's not a mommy blog. It seems to me that mommy blogs are about explaining how to handle this or that parenting situation. There's some takeaway, some nugget of advice. I have no advice for anyone. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. And right now, those pants have a cream cheese stain on them.

I do, however, talk about my kid a lot. I can't help it, though. I waited a long damn time to have kids; it's all I ever really wanted to do. And I thought for a while that I would never be able to do so. So I'm pretty excited about the whole parenthood thing. My daughter is my greatest achievement, my favorite person in the world, and the reason I get out of bed every morning. That I've managed to get and stay (knock wood) pregnant twice seems like an embarrassment of riches.

However, though my focus is mostly on being a mother, I do more than mommy. And while I track most of my progress at PopClogs now that 43t is defunct (sniff), occasionally I feel things require more elaboration than I feel comfortable putting into such a forum. These tend to become blog entries. (Or will, once I find the time/energy to write them all down. I've been writing this entry in my head for a week.) I have a host of projects and goals that I will begin to address once I can stay conscious more than two hours at a time and stop feeling so violently seasick. Until then, I'm just surviving.

But it's not just a self-improvement blog. I want to start focusing on my career at some point (right now, it's mostly just a way to keep the lights on). Over the years, I've amassed a variety of related but distinct skills that I would eventually like to package into a service, because I really have no intention of returning to the office. I like working from home. It suits me.

That's part of what this blog is all about. I have no official writing samples in my portfolio -- nothing I'm proud of, anyway. Nothing I feel is special, or indicative of my voice. And the informal writing I've done is all over the place -- entries on this site or that site. I wanted to create a place where I could showcase my best work, and also get back into the writing groove. Part of being an editor is being a good writer, but it's been so very long since I wrote anything more than a few paragraphs that I'm not even sure I remember how.

And I miss writing. I used to write every day, just for fun. Now I barely have time to respond to email. But I want to make a point of writing, to feel comfortable calling myself a writer again.

So...here I am. Welcome to the pile. It's sure to be a mixed bag, but I'll try to make it an entertaining mess, at least.

I'm still here

There goes another month. This one's been a haze of nausea and exhaustion. The first trimester is hard enough without 60-hour work weeks, but with them...well, let's just say that it's a good day when my shirt's on right side out.

Unless I'm suffering from selective amnesia, this pregnancy is harder than Anya's in terms of morning sickness. I haven't vomited (I'm not a puker), but the food aversions are brutal this time. (And when I say that, know that I lived on cheese and crackers for the first three months last time around.) I have days in which I can maybe choke down the equivalent of one meal. So I also have headaches. And exhaustion is just par for the course.

Things have also been crazy lately. In a few days, my baby turns 3, and won't be such a baby anymore. The preparations for her celebrations (yes, plural) have just added to the hectic pace of my life. Today's pretty much booked from morning through bedtime, and I'm not convinced I'll get it all done. I have the possibility of pockets of free time over the weekend, but I can't count on them. 

And this is how the last few weeks have gone. Occasionally I get a free afternoon on a Sunday, but most days I get perhaps a couple of hours of downtime, total. It's wearing on me.

So I was pretty cranky last night. We were folding laundry at 9:30, just so I'd have one less thing to do today. And I was snippy, and I knew I was being snippy, but I was just so tired and sick and stressed out that I could not stop.

All Anya wanted to do was play. But her play was undoing the work I was doing faster than I was doing it, so I snapped at her.

She kind of steered clear of me the rest of the night.

My time with this child is too short as it is; I don't want to waste what time I do have.

So I gave myself the next few days off of freelancing. Being short two articles this month isn't going to make or break me financially, and the extra hour's sleep this morning took the edge off the headache I woke with.

I need to make more of an effort to give myself time off. Yes, we need the money. We will always need the money. But I need to take care of myself, too. It's all too easy to let that slide until the damage is done.