“This blog is a reflection of what is going on in my life at the time of writing.
It’s an extract of all that I’ve consumed and experienced up until the moment I hit “post”.
It’s a carefully curated dip into my world, brain and heart.
It’s a little bit of me.”
On Writing and Not-Writing
Motherhood, Tiredness and Blogging
It’s been a while. Two months, to be precise. Just over, actually, not that I’m keeping track. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t have let it reach two whole months since my last blog post. Life has moved very quickly since I started my new job and the blog once again plummeted to the very bottom of my priorities, flailing around helplessly under “feed child/feed oneself/bathe child/bathe oneself/ do some cardio/ do ALL THE OTHER THINGS…”.
I mentioned to a friend a few weeks ago how I just didn’t know what I was doing with the blog anymore or what I even wanted to say. In retrospect I was clearly having a moment of overthinking induced self-doubt. All rather self-indulgent and dramatised. “I don’t even know who I am anymore!”. Hush now.
Mother to mother, I went on about how tired I was, how I could barely string sentences together in actual conversation sometimes (again, tad over-exaggeration, I believe my speech is generally adequate), let alone sit down at night, post bed-time routine and formulate thoughts really worth sharing, something real/amusing/witty/wise, if any of the above.
I was done commenting on how exhausting single parenting is.
I had pretty much drained the Anxiety & Uncertainty bucket for all it was worth. Not much more to say on the matter for now, we know life is scary and we must all be present and meditate, and read more Eckhart Tolle.
I was tired of…my own thoughts, acutely aware of how repetitive the blog was becoming.
Her response was pretty straightforward.
“I guess you’ll post when you have something you really want to say”.
I liked that. Sat with it for a while.
I journalled my little heart out whenever I could, read books that WEREN’T self-help, started actual novels, and generally buzzed along quite nicely, sometimes anxious, exhausted but happy in equal measure, living life.
Single-Mummy-Working-Life that is.
It’s rather different to Single-Mummy-Unemployed-And-Restless-Life.
My small but touching blog had faded into the abyss and I thought I was okay with it.
I wasn’t.
The same niggle would creep up on me each and every day, morning, noon and night “Er, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE?!….”
Quickly silenced with a reasonable: “When I have something I really want to say!”
It didn’t always work, my mind would hit back:
“JUST SAY ALL THE THINGS! STOP BEING SO PICKY! NO ONE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE ANYWAY! FUCK INSIGHTFUL, JUST WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT! Write essays all about Maia if you have to! JUST DON’T STOP WRITING YOU FOOL!!”.
I wanted to write about all the little things.
All those mundane day to day happenings that seem like the small things but when you look back are actually the really big things.
Maia switching to school dinners and the immense joy and relief that brought me.
Maia dressing herself more often than not.
Maia washing her hands, properly, all by herself.
Maia learning how to write and the indescribable feeling of pride when I see it on the page.
I wanted to wax lyrical about all these baby triumphs.
Express my pride, document it, revel in it.
And so why exactly did I not?
Genuine. Fucking. Tiredness.
That, and the accurate assumption that my blog would survive a dry spell.
As much as I often think my quality of life might be improved if I functioned more like a robot; with increased productivity and therefore financial gains, sadly I am very much a human. I get these things called feelings, and sometimes they’re quite straightforward, just straight up KNACKERED.
After the school run, a few hours in the office and time to recover from what is often a rather emotionally draining morning-routine with a very tired five year old, school pick-up to welcome a now extra-tired and demanding but also rather excited-from-her-day-at-school little person (who seems to have an endless list of requests the minute she runs into my tired-but-loving arms)…After all of this, plus general life-duties, I just don’t really feel like writing about it.
Once the child is asleep, I don’t even want to think about my day, let alone attempt to shed light on it or derive some kind of humour from something that happened eight hours ago. I want to shut off, shut down and shut UP.
Whilst my soul may be yearning to say something, my body and mind are rarely on board, and if they are, I’ll end up on the phone to a friend or hovering by my Dad in the kitchen to spill all the metaphorical beans. Those are the evenings.
Weekends are a little different.
I have high hopes for the weekend word counts of 2019.
So there we have it. My so-called silence was merely a spout of life-living-minus-frequent-documentation.
Tiredness. Human-ness…And probably to some degree, a touch of of laziness. Though I’m not such a fan of that one.
*Oh, and a long-held desire to minimise screen time at night, she says, on her phone.
I don’t think it’s ever really been a case of not knowing what I want to say.
Of course I know what I want to say.
I’ve always known.
I’m just too bloody tired to say any of it.
Of late, I want to say how crazy and messy and beautiful being a mother is, (hell, being a human with or without offspring) and how much I love and hate single parenting in equal measure.
This blog is a reflection of what is going on in my life at the time of writing.
It’s an extract of all that I’ve consumed and experienced up until the moment I hit “post”.
It’s a carefully curated dip into my world, brain and heart.
It’s a little bit of me.
If I’m not posting, it’s because I’m giving a little bit of me to something else.
Perhaps you’ll find me engulfed in a book or a painting or even a human. I have quite a few in my life. Turns out being a mother is one thing, but friendships also require quite a level of commitment. You have to actually make contact every now and again. Call the woman up. Pre-arrange the call in advance. Drop a message. Maybe even write them a letter to show how much you care. (Which brings me to the ancient art of letter-writing, and how I am determined to bring it back.)
I digress.
This was meant to be an introduction to a post reflecting on “2018, Love and Joy and Gratitude”.
Never actually made it to the post itself.
That’s what happens when you sit with too many words inside you for too long, eventually you just explode in a volcano seeping with all of the above.
Two months too long.
Do return for the actual post.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
―
The Colourful Kind 