Debating

So it's been a while since I posted, and yeah, that seems to be a habit with me.  I've been doing some serious thinking, and am leaning toward discontinuing this blog.

Like many, many people, I struggle with what I want to do each day.  And by that I mean professionally.  My personal life may not be perfect, but honestly, when I get to day care to pick up my son, and he sees me, and drops all toys and runs to me yelling "MOMMY!", I really feel that I have no other purpose in life than that.  It's that great.  That moment can blot out any bad day, and this is coming from someone who wasn't raised in that tradition.  My mother never really brought up the "wife and mother" stuff with my sister and I-she wanted us to be intelligent, successful, and resilient.  I like to think we're both those three things, but I wasn't prepared for how a child might impact the life I'd set out for myself.  i didn't understand the kind of love I'd have for him, and the kind of sacrifices I'd make for him.

Writing for a living has always been a dream of mine.  I'm still working out the when and how, and reading as much as I can between a full-time job, two classes, a toddler, and trying to retain some semblance of a marriage and a social life.  The more I start researching humor writing and that sort of thing, I realize this sort of writing is done to death.  And by that I mean the mom blog.

If you want a book or a blog about parenting, no matter your style or your interest, it's out there.  Some moms present themselves as terrifying (looking at YOU, Tiger Mom, and maybe at my own mom) and some portray motherhood as the pinnacle of existence as a woman.  You'll also find every single level in between.  I've noticed three trends in the books I've read (they may vary slightly but really, it's in three categories)-the stay at home mom who is really happy about it, the stay at home/working mom who seems equally happy and pissed about it, and the working mom who seems to be trying to justify it.  "I make my hockey kid peanut butter sandwiches and have a glass of wine and it's ok!"  Maybe also the tattooed, punk-rock mom, but these days, honey, who are you kidding?  There's more tattooed moms than non-tattooed moms in my city.  You're not even edgy anymore.  In 15 years our kids are going to think tattoos are the lamest thing ever because everyone's parents have one.

Which is not to say I dislike them.  Tattoos, I mean, not parents.  I want one.  And I'm encouraging Ben to get MEG LIFE on his abdomen, Tupac style.  So far no dice.  But back on track.

So you read a lot about parenthood-the serious advice, the humor, the "how to raise an A student/Christian/Jewish/Muslim/valedictorian/well-rounded Princeton applicant who never shows up two hours past curfew at 16 years old and proceeds to barf on your car".

And fuck if it doesn't get boring.  So I'm pretty done with this blog.  There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said, and the thing is, we all (hopefully) do the best that we can, and that means different things to different people.   I don't want to gush about my kid off of facebook, and I really only do it there to keep my relatives and friends who I don't see up on things.   I've been intimidated to take a leap into writing about things that I care about, who I'm not related to, and to stretching into fields I'm unfamiliar with, but it's time to get over that.  I'm nothing unusual as a mom, but I'm also completely unusual as a mom.

So maybe some day I'll write a book, and I'll spare you the expense of my advice:  get the epidural.  Totally just saved you fifteen bucks, or whatever it's going to cost to get books implanted in your brain after Kindle technology improves to the point where the new Twilight book literally haunts your dreams.

Until then, keep your eye out for the new blog,  Go To Sleep, Crazy Lady, and hopefully a few more projects I'll get to work on once classes are over this winter.  Branching into some grant writing and some marketing, so we'll see how it all turns out.

Til Then-  Smell ya later.