Did you miss the part where I said I'm terrible at Instagram? It was on my Instagram... But on stories, so it won't still be there.
I read something the other day which described maternity leave as a peak into a life that you never imagined and never knew you wanted. It's about slow mornings and spending time cherishing your child and the developments they are making and the learning they are doing and the growth that they are going through, and all too soon it's over and your back to meetings and emails and everything else your job entails, and so many of us are over it. So many mum's try to start businesses or side gigs that let them be at home more and stay present with their kid or kids. Am I trying to do that? No, I'm not, for a few reasons.
I'm not going to lie, the idea of sending my child to nursery and going back to work is daunting, partly because it feels so alien. Work was a completely different life ago and a wholly different version of me, but I also appreciate that the structure of it will be good for me, and the structure of nursery will be good for my son, and the socialising with other children will be good for him, too. He can play in different ways with different people and different toys, and it's something I would never be able to provide for him at home, and more than anything I want what is best for him, and being at home permanently with just me and his dad in the evenings, I don't think that is what is best for him.
One of the things I have to factor in as well is that I have a good job. Technically I have a great job. I work for the Civil Service and that affords me decent holidays, decent maternity leave and maternity pay, flexibility and stability in a way that my own part time, self employed, whatever thing never could, and there is a lot of value in that. There's also a lot of value in being able to go in, do my job, then come home without being mentally or physically exhausted like I might be from either turning the garden into a jam making, cider making or cake making exercise (we have A LOT of fruit) and actually be present with my child. Depending on different options, I can look at compressing my hours and having a day a week with him, or working term time only so that we actually have the school holidays to do something. Whilst it's possible to do that with your own side hustle or otherwise I think it's also possible that whilst work is there, you want to do it so that you make as much as you can from it to do other things, but then it bleeds over into family time. Something like that requires being strict with yourself in a way I'm not good at.
I love writing. I have loved it for a very long time and when NaNoWriMo went down in flames it felt like a physical wound that took a long time to heal. I don't have the capacity anymore to write the way I used to. When I was single and wasn't a mother I could sit for hours and lock in on what I was writing and even if I thought afterwards that it was a waste of time, it didn't matter, because it was my time to waste. Now, it's my time with my husband, it's my time with my child, and I can't sit at the breakfast bar in my old flat and ignore the pain I put myself in hunched over the laptop typing furiously away at whatever I'm working on. I couldn't do it at the moment because typing with these nails is infuriating! Writing blogs, even when I write a few at a time and schedule them, is cathartic to me, but can I keep it up when I've got work to juggle, too? We'll see! Can I make it a side hustle? Probably not, because I won't have the time or the commitment to get through that slog to make it happen, and even then you have to be incredibly lucky. Would I make it my career like I used to want? Even if I was given the opportunity to, I don't think I would, because I wouldn't trust myself not to become very isolated and very distracted when my sole work place was in my home, and grabbing the laptop at 2am is an option, even if it's not a healthy one.
Also, I think a lot of mummy bloggers either post their children online - which we aren't doing - or post them with emojis over their faces - which still feels too risky to me - or write or share things I don't think their child will appreciate being online when they get older. Yes, I talk about my kid on here, but I'm not sharing every cough, spit and bowel movement and I never would. Children's online lives are the subject of a lot of debate and I honestly think that if there was a feasible way for myself and my husband to move with our child to Sweden we would genuinely consider it, partly because it would be an adventure and an experience but also because of the way that the country is rolling back on technology within education and refocusing on physical textbooks and handwriting. I know from personal experience that writing with pen and paper and writing with a laptop are two very different things. Add writing with a typewriter in there and I really understand why one of the attendees to the last Night of Writing Dangerously turned up with a Smith Corona on a sack truck with their novel pages in a box or a folder. (I regret not photographing that particular eccentricity - it was epic!) Personally I find that typing on a typewriter - the proper old manual types, not the later electrics, adds a darkness or moodiness to my writing that I love but have little use for since it's not really my preferred genre. Engaging with hand writing is not only a different skill but it uses and develops a different part of the brain and we are losing that, or the next generations are, because we focus so heavily on computers and how much they can do for us so that we don't have to. When you think about how far social media use goes with that, it's scary and that's without the bullying possibilities, the risks of the wrong sort of people accessing images of your child, cyber stalking and deep fakes using images of children to manufacture evidence of child abuse.
At the time of writing this, we're pre-wedding, pre-honeymoon, though when this is posted we will be away and enjoying ourselves. Where we are going has limited connectivity and I honestly can't wait because it gets us away from the beck and call of the phones or the computers. The only thing calling me will be the hot tub and you bet I will be answering that one! If I was trying to build any sort of consistent following, or mummy blogger brand or anything like that, I don't think even being away like that would help me to switch off and it would likely cause me more stress because I wouldn't be able to access everything, even if I had things prepped to go live without me clicking a button.
So no, I'm not. It's not the plan, and I'm sorry if it feels like a departure from my usual self.
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