Uncategorized

Whew! – On to Phase 2!

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

Well we did it! We made it through Phase 1! My son left this morning and now it’s just the (infinitely easier) group of girls. All the mom’s come later today and then the fun (Phase 2) really begins!

{Phase 3 is when three of us moms leave and the fourth has to stay and make the magic happen. I’m so glad that is not me! I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again.}

The three nights with my son actually went really well. There were definitely spats between him and the girls, especially in the cabin, but most of the time it was fine. I framed the weekend as special mom/son time (thanks Irene!) and he seemed excited about that. He especially loved sleeping in the same bed as me for “all night snuggles.” (This was less fun for me because that boy is ALL OVER THE PLACE when he sleeps – but as long as he was sleeping I was grateful).

And we have been sleeping! After a rough first night the subsequent sleeps have been decent for everyone. It’s generally silent by 10:30 or 11pm and they aren’t up until after 8am. Pretty ideal idea you ask me.

The first day the girls were all over the place – doing a million things for 30 minutes or less. I found this exhausting and unsustainable. Yesterday (at my urging) they found a much better rhythm. Instead of going to the pool three times for 30-60 minutes a pop they just hung out down there for four hours. Much more manageable.

We also managed to start a fire and make s’mores (at my son’s request). I was quite proud of myself (camping is not my thing and I don’t have much experience with any aspect of it).

My dad picked up my son at 11:15 this morning. Right now the girls are eating lunch and playing Uno. Then they plan to head to the pool. I’m not really sure when the ladies are coming up, but we’ll likely be at the pool when they do. It’s going to be a good day.

Tomorrow we head to Clear Lake! Tomorrow will be a really good day.

Thanks for all your support as we attempt our DIY overnight camp extravaganza!

Uncategorized

Freedom!

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

{Written early Wednesday…}

We made it! Getting everyone’s stuff, plus a ton of food, plus six bodies, into the SUV was tough, but we managed. We left later than we had intended, but the traffic ebbed while we were eating at In-n-Out and there was still plenty of daylight to explore once we arrived.

This place is great. There are tons of families here. It’s a super low key vibe. The kids can bike around by themselves. There is a playground with a little climbing wall. A pool. A jump pillow. Some little activities like mining for gems and tie die. There is a petting zoo too!

I’m giving the kids a lot of freedom. We have a set of walkie talkies with big enough ranges to work within the grounds. Right now three of the girls are biking around. My kids are still in the pool (my daughter wanted to keep swimming, which thrilled my son). Everything is outside so the kids don’t have to wear masks. It’s awesome.

The cabin is really cute. It’s the perfect size. There is a queen bed set up, a loft above that and a small room with bunk beds. There is a full bathroom and a kitchenette with a full fridge, microwave, and gas cook top. There is a little flat screen on the wall with basic cable and a couch. It’s great.

All told this will probably cost each of the four families about $1K. It’s a great deal for 10 nights / 11 days (including an afternoon on Clear Lake). I’m so glad we made this happen.

{I tried to upload some photos but I couldn’t make it happen – maybe when I get home.}

Uncategorized

Thoughts (evidently on screen time!) before we leave

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

Yesterday was…overwhelming. A lot of errands with my kids and then more errands alone. A lot of shopping. A lot of running in to grab one thing. A lot of worrying I was forgetting (despite all my lists).

But now, after an early morning trip to the hardware store to get cinch lashes for the roof bag, I think we have it all. Or at least enough to get through the first three days.

I definitely took on too much of the planning and shopping, but since I’m the only one not working, and I have the Costco card, it made sense. I’m so glad I’m at the front of all this and can bow out after Sunday to let others take over.

My husband keeps marveling that I’m not at all concerned about being the only adult up there with five kids for three days. Honestly, four 11 year olds don’t worry me at all. Actually, I’m sad that really I’m just worried about one of them, my son, who I assume will make those three days incredibly difficult. I’m not quite sure how it got this bad (actually, I have plenty of ideas), but he’s not the kind, considerate kid I want him to be. He’s not even content most of the time. I know he’s going to be upset about all kinds of things during the next three days; no video games (the arcade is actually closed), no streaming services, no friends, nothing to do, etc.). He will be angry with the girls no matter how much they include him. He will be angry at me no matter how hard I try to make it fun.

It’s just… a major bummer. I know it’s hard to be the sibling who is only there because he’s, well, the sibling. I get it. But I think many kids could happy to hang out in a new place with lots of cool stuff (maybe not many, but just some?). And maybe he will be, if I hang out with him. And if that’s the case then great! I’m not expecting this to be restful or relaxing for me. Far from it. I’m totally ready to be with him 24/7 – I just don’t want that 24/7 to be nothing but bitch and moan. My son is SO GOOD at bitch and moan. He absolutely excels at it.

I informed my kids today that once school starts we won’t be playing video games during the school week. They can watch two shows a night, Monday through Thursday (so they can each pick one) and that is it (I want to phase this out eventually but that probably won’t happen for a while). They were NOT happy about it. I have been thinking about implementing this rule for the final three weeks of summer, when they are in camp, but I think that will be too much (for me as much as for them). At that point I’ll just bring their video game time to one hour (with no TV) so they aren’t just going cold turkey once school starts.

Our screen time really has ramped WAY up since the pandemic started. It’s not good for them. It erodes their contentment. My son, especially, struggles. We’ve taken a few days off, when his reaction to losing in a game or to stopping has reached totally unacceptable levels. We talk about how it’s not a punishment when that happens, it’s just a break when our reactions tell us that the current amount of play time is overwhelming. We talk a lot about whether video games actually make us feel good, and that if they only make us feel good while we use them, but make us feel bad a lot of the rest of the time, then we should rethink how we use them. He seems to get that.

When he has finished playing, but a long afternoon stretches in front of him, he can ratchet the begging for more video games to truly discouraging levels. But after about an hour he will eventually go read a book or do a quiet activity. We never back down from our screen time limits once we’ve made them for a day, so that helps, but man is the 30-60 before he finally accepts that hard on everyone.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when parents were assured that crazy levels of screen time were actually fine, we didn’t worry so much about how much they played video games. Just getting my son through the long morning with almost nothing school-related to do (while we worked!) felt like a major accomplishment. At that point, two hours in front of the Switch felt like a reward for all of us. But as the pandemic wore on we realized that 15+ months of this kind of screen time was way too much. Articles coming out at the time suggested the same. “Experts” were walking back there “do what you need to do, it’s fine!” comments to a more conservative, “well it’s been over a year of this and if we’d known how long this was going to last we could have suggested a more measured approach.” Of course, measured was impossible in the early stages of this crisis, and by the time it might have been more possible we were exhausted and overwhelmed by the uncertainty of when it would all end. We were given so few options, and we did the best we can, and I’m not going to dwell on it except to glean useful information for moving forward. An organized day of camp full of socialization and physical exertion is absolutely what my family needs to get our screen time back on track. And that starts again for us next week!

I didn’t mean for this to be a post about screen time, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot because the KOA will be a big reset for my daughter (less so for my son because he’s only going a few days). I know the way we’re using screen time no long serves us well, and I want to make changes, and changes require consideration and planning. So I guess that ended up happening here. SHU’s post this morning was probably also a motivator. 😉

And now it’s time to stop because the brief respite of my son being in the bath and my daughter being on a zoom call with her friends (they are all vibrating on the same insane frequency right now so it’s best to let them do it together via a screen lest they make their families crazy) is over. My son is now repeatedly entering his sister’s room despite her increasingly frustrated assertions that he JUST LEAVE. I suggested my son FT his friend who just came home from Hawaii, but he hates to FT so no. At 1:30 they get to play video games while I switch cars with my friend, get the roof bag on the top, and pack all the food. I guess the reset starts when we get there!

Do you help to reset screen time for your kids (or yourself?!)

Connection/Friendship/Parenting & Family/Travel

DIY Overnight Camp

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

My daughter was supposed to attend her very first overnight camp last summer – one week at a Girl Scout facility about two hours from here. She was nervous, and honestly was probably more relieved than disappointed when it was cancelled due to Covid. I was bummed out because I knew we were missing some key years in getting used to sleep away camp – an experience I didn’t really have but have heard positive things about from friends who felt it was an formative part of their childhood (many of them started going when they were 8 years old!)

So when the sleep away camps in our area were only offering three week stints (again, because of Covid and the health guidelines here at the time), I was doubly disappointed because I knew that was too long for my daughter. She is 11 years old, and a homebody and I just didn’t think she could handle three weeks away from home. Not after a year of being at home exclusively.

My friends were similarly bummed out. Luckily they were also proactive. In March, after a night of drinking on my friend’s deck, and hearing about how awesome this KOA in Petaluma is, my friend called me and we actually went on and booked a six person cabin. For 10 nights. I still can’t believe we did that. My friends are amazing at many things, but making a random, drinking night wouldn’t-it-be-cool plan a reality is one of the best.

Tomorrow we leave for the KOA. I’m taking the first stint, so I’m driving up four girls (plus my son), all their stuff, and a ton of food, all in my friend’s SUV. I’ll be up there with them on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday my dad will come up and collect my son, right before all the other moms arrive for the weekend. We have rented a boat on Clear Lake (which is very low yes, but still has enough water for this boat rental company to operate) on Saturday (my birthday!) and we’ll just hang out at the KOA on Sunday before three of us go back home, leaving another mom to stay with the girls. Finally, a third mom will go back up for the tail end of the trip. They come back home on Friday.

All told the girls will be up there almost two weeks (11 days/10 nights). No one is bringing phones or electronic devices (there is a TV in the cabin). The girls will be making their own meals (and cleaning up after those meals) and finding ways to entertain themselves. There is a pool and a lake, both for swimming. There is a climbing wall and an arcade. There is warm weather (for us anyway, because nothing feels colder than summer in San Francisco) and sun.

There will also be boredom and complaining. There will be squabbles and homesickness. There will be wanting to return early (I’m honestly so glad I got the first leg of the stay!). All that is to be expected. It won’t be a perfect experience, but it will definitely be one to remember. These girls spent the pandemic together, and this trip is their farewell to that sequestered existence. My daughter and one friend will be at the same middle school next year, but the other two will not. It’s definitely the beginning of the end of something – I desperately hope not their friendships.

As many of you know, I longed deeply for the community and sense of belonging I found, and this year solidified, with these women. We are so lucky to have each other and not a day goes by that I don’t pinch myself in bewilderment. Never in my wildest dreams would I have hoped to be a part of a group of amazing women like this. I’m so thankful I learned some important lessons from other friendships that went awry – I think that helped me ready for this, when I was lucky enough for it to materialize.

So much of finding friends is luck. You need to find the right people, in the right circumstances, at the right time. So many variables. I wonder sometimes if we’d be this close now if it weren’t for the pandemic. When we created our little pod, we chose each other to get through this. We chose it for our girls and for each other. And when you can’t see other people much or at all, you turn to those you can see that much more. If I have to thank the pandemic for this group of friends, it will make my relationship with last 17 months that much more complicated…

{And somehow my kids are still asleep at 8:22am. I guess when they can’t play videogames in the morning (as is the case on weekdays) that is more likely to happen. I’ll have to keep that in mind…}

We have a packed day. I’m getting my kids Covid tested, and getting my own allergy shot. We need to shop for food (so much food!) at Costco and wash my car at my parents’ house (my friend is taking my car when I take hers and it is filthy – hasn’t been washed in I don’t know how many months). And then of course, we have to pack!

Let the wild rumpus start!

Parenting & Family

6th graders riding buses

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

My daughter will be in 6th grade next year, at a middle school less than two miles from our house. Its new start time is 9:30am (yes, this is crazy, crazy late). I’m assuming the Beacon program there will offer before-care of some kind, but my daughter is a late riser and she wants to take advantage of the later start time. My husband can take her on the bus that late and make it to work around 10am, but then he wouldn’t be home from work until after 8pm (and that assumes his work would approve the schedule change). That is not an ideal scenario.

Currently, the plan is for our daughter to take the public bus to school. It’s a straight shot from a stop 1.5 blocks from our house, with a stop directly in front of her new school. It’s about a 12-15 minute bus ride, which stays on the same street the entire time. She wears a Clipper card that re-ups automatically when the amount falls below $20 on a lanyard. She has a Gizmo watch that she wears on her wrist, so we can call/text each other and use GPS to track her location. Probably most importantly, her friend will be on the bus with her.

Her friend is the only daughter of a single mom who is a nurse and had to work at the hospital during the pandemic. She is very independent and responsible. My daughter could not ask for a better bus mate.

Her friend has been riding the bus to the new middle school for four weeks this summer (she participated in the summer school/camp there). She rode it with her mom for a week before riding it alone. And she needs to take two buses to get there; the first brings her to the stop where my daughter catches her only bus. Her friend also has a watch phone (the one offered by Sprint), so they can call each other if they need to. They rode the bus together during the first week of summer school/camp. They even rode it alone once! It’s a totally manageable bus ride, especially with a friend.

The hope is that they will take the bus together for long enough that my daughter feels comfortable taking it alone (for the random days that her friend is sick). The timing will be a little tricky in the morning if she really wants to take advantage of the late start – she wouldn’t really need to wake up until 8am, which is when my husband and son will be leaving for their bus and I’m not sure my daughter is ready to get herself up and dressed and out the door alone. But maybe as she sees her friend doing it, she’ll self motivate. We shall see. Right now the main concern is her getting to school, which will happen on the bus!

You may wonder where I will be in the mornings and the answer is – at work! After asking for some special schedule accommodation every year since my daughter was born – I am finally extricating myself from morning drop off. When our kids’ school started at 7:50am I could barely make it work by dropping them off at 7:30am, then booking it down to my school (and arriving late enough times that my friend was on speed dial to let my kids into my room and sit with them for 5 minutes while they got started). It was so stressful! But now that their schools start later I can’t participate in drop off. This is amazing news! Now my husband will do the mornings and I will do the afternoons and I’ll be a lot happier for it. (He probably won’t be – as reading a post about how when I was more satisfied with our division of labor he was less satisfied, reminded me. But oh well! He’s the one who wants to live in the city, with only one (ideally no) car, and thinks everyone should manage on public transportation. Now he’ll understand what that really looks like!)

As for pick up – my daughter’s school day ends at 4pm so if she takes the bus home I’d be there shortly after. I could also just pick her up at 4pm most days. So if their aftercare program doesn’t offer come compelling programing we will probably just pick her up of have her take the bus home and spend 0-30ish minutes alone before I get there.

Obviously our plan is not entirely in place, but I do think the “6th graders taking the bus” part will work. When I lived in Hong Kong I had incredible independence in 6th grade. I was allowed to take the shuttle to the bus to the subway to spend 6+ hours at the mall with friends. I took the bus downtown to the orthodontist’s office alone. I walked through the open air market, and then through a shanty town on a hill to my friend’s house alone. I took taxis alone! All in 6th grade and all without a phone! (I moved back to the US during 7th grade so I know this all happened in 6th grade). If my distracted ADHD self I could do all that, my distracted ADHD daughter can learn to ride the bus to school. A little independence (and the responsibility that comes with it) can really unlock a child’s feelings of self-worth. I can see that happening with my daughter, and I’m excited for her.

When did you start taking the bus alone? When do you think you’ll let your kids do it?

Financial Security/Parenting & Family

Sticker Shock

Posted on by noemikjames / 9 Comments

My son is starting at a new school in the fall, and we’ve been interested in their YMCA aftercare program. The registration is this coming week, so I finally found the information online yesterday. First I found a PDF of the registration form from 2019. The non-member monthly fee was $498, which was more than I was expecting but an amount I could make work. But when I finally found the actual online registration page the amount was $629 a month, considerably more than it had been pre-pandemic. So much more!

I have to admit, I had a hard time accepting the idea of paying $629 a month for 3.5 hours of coverage in the afternoon. Especially when I only need around 2 of those hours.

I guess we’re going to stick with the Rec and Park aftercare program we used to use. My son didn’t love it, but it’s a lot cheaper (because it’s Rec and Park it’s subsidized by the city) and hopefully I can pick him up around 4-4:30 most days. He probably won’t have many/any friends there (it pulls kids from his old school (where he has no friends) and his new school (where most kids go to the YMCA aftercare), but I suppose he will have to deal. Spending $6.5K on aftercare is just crazy. My friend is paying $11K for her entire Catholic school tuition! That is a full day academic program! This is just some games and snacks after school!

Last year we felt pretty good about our finances, despite losing our tenant’s rent as income. I was making more (because I took on an extra class) and we weren’t paying for the kids’ aftercare or extracurriculars. We don’t put them in much, but even weekly swim lessons and a few other random activities add up. Now I’ll be making my regular salary and we’ll be paying for aftercare and extracurriculars again. It’s sobering to realize that this year is the real test of whether or not we can make it without the tenant’s rent. I hope we don’t have to make too many sacrifices to make it work, but we love the space and never want to have to pay someone $20K to move out again so we’ll have to make it work.

{And yes, I know how incredibly privileged we are to have weathered the pandemic from a place of such financial comfort. I am definitely grateful for that. I’m just absorbing the new reality that is to come.}

Have you experienced any post-pandemic sticker shock?

Connection/Parenting & Family

Together

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

I know I previously said I wasn’t going to mention some of our summer plans, but you know what? F*ck it. If people want to judge me, and tell me how horrible my choices are they can, because we took our kids on planes to see our family and you know what? For us, the risk was worth it.

There were plenty of times I almost bailed out of these travel plans. When Southwest cancelled our direct flight from SFO to STL and had us spending 4 hours in Kansas City… When I saw how crazy the Covid numbers were in Missouri… When I just felt panicked about getting on a plane…

But we were able to change our reservations to fly direct out of Oakland, and the numbers in St. Louis were much better than other parts of the state, and I made the 2019 photo book a couple weeks before we left which made it easier for me to talk myself down from the plane dread (because I reminded of how much I miss my family and how much fun we all have at the farm).

Our stay was shorter (10 days instead of 14) and we made sure all our activities were outside (and the weather cooperated with mid 80s to low 90s degree days). We never took the kids inside in a public space (except the Art Museum on my husband’s last morning – and there was almost no one there). We did hit up the zoo and various swimming pools. All the adult relatives we saw (including the 15 adults at the farm) were fully vaccinated (none of the children qualified for vaccinations). It was a different trip in a lot of ways, but it felt very familiar.

The farm was amazing. My sister (who lives in England) and my cousin (who lives in South Carolina) were not there, but everyone else was. We cooked together. We ate together. We swam together. We played together. We walked the creek together. We looked at fish in the quarry together. We sang karaoke together. We danced together. We marveled at fireworks together. We remembered together. We just were, together.

And it was amazing.

I know my kids will likely be vaccinated this fall, at which point the pandemic, for our family, will pretty much be over (at least it will be here in the Bay Area, where our vaccination rates are so high – yes I recognize our incredible privilege). But this trip only happens July 4th, and we didn’t think the risks warranted missing it. I know many families are making similar choices. I also know that many families would have let everyone else gather while they stayed at home, and I absolutely respect that decision. I hope those people can respect mine.

Heaven is a quarry lake about 90 minutes outside St. Louis.
Marriage/Parenting & Family

My Marriage: The Pandemic Addition

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

So people (at least a few!) enjoy it when I talk about my marriage. I haven’t talked about it as much lately because things are (surprisingly!) pretty good. There were years when my marriage was steeped in resentment, but not anymore. If the pandemic had happened four years ago I don’t know if my husband and I would have been together at the end of it. I’m very grateful that it happened when our kids were a little older, and we had worked on some of our issues (or they had, over time, mostly resolved themselves).

Having said that, I will say that things are really great. I’m honestly not really sure what they are. I’m not mad at my husband, and I don’t think he’s mad at me. I feel really and truly grateful for all he did this past year to make managing everything possible. He really did step up in so many ways. There really isn’t anything I wish he had done differently. (I honestly don’t know if he feels differently – I remember a while ago when I felt better about the division of labor I found out he was actually mad about it so…)

So, in my mind, the division of labor in our marriage feels more fair than it’s ever been. And yet.. we’re not closer than we’ve ever been. I think mostly we’re just burnt out on each other, tired of each other’s company and tired of being stuck at our house with our kids. But even as our kids went to camp these past two weeks, my husband and I didn’t take advantage of that time to be together. Mostly we just took advantage of the kid-free time to get our own shit done.

Honestly, I think my husband is sick of me. Or better said, I think he’s more sick of me than I am of him.

But I also know he’s more introverted than I am, and that being around everyone ALL DAY EVERY DAY has been harder for him than it has been for me. I’m telling myself that the distance I notice between us is just the necessary space we both need to decompress. I’m not worried about it, actually, but then I wonder if I should be. Is that silly? I guess I wonder if not worrying about it is another kind of apathy and I don’t think apathy, when it comes to one’s supposed closest relationship, is a good thing.

But I’m telling myself it’s fine. I’m telling myself that, eventually, we’ll want to spend time together again. It’s not like we dislike being in each other’s company, we both just kind of don’t care one way or another. He prefers to play video games at night, and he used to do that while I was working until the wee hours. Now he still does that, and I read a book or play a game on my phone. Both of us are fine with the arrangement – it’s not like either one wants the other to initiate time together and worries we’ll be rebuffed. I don’t know. I think we’re both just so, so tired and neither of us even knows what we need to rest and refuel.

Being away with my friends for two nights was wonderful. And I’m taking my kids with my parents for a few days of fun starting tomorrow, so he’ll get some time all alone this week. He’s meeting up with us for the end of the fun (next weekend), and I honestly I just wanted him to skip it because I know he needs time away from all of us, and being with my parents is always stressful for him (and therefore, for both of us), but he insisted on coming so we’ll see how it goes! I really don’t know if the camp stretch at the end of the summer is enough for either of us to decompress in the ways we need to… Maybe by the holidays, if the kids get to stay in school for the entire fall, we’ll be in a better place.

So yeah. My marriage is in a pretty good place when it comes to how *I* feel about the division of labor (and consequently our partnership), but on an interpersonal level it’s not the best it’s ever been. I wonder (now that I wrote it above), if he actually harbors some resentment about how much he had to do this past 18 months. If that’s the case then he’s going to have to get some outside support in working through that resentment because I am TIRED of helping him process his anger about having to participate as much as I do in the child rearing. At one point he said something to the effect of, “when I had kids I didn’t sign up for this” (referring to the complete lack of child care support we were managing), and I had the wherewithal to wait a day or so before I brought it up again and told him that I felt that EXACT SAME WAY for the first five years of motherhood. I don’t think he really got it, but I struggle to understand exactly what his expectations about raising kids were and are, and where those expectations come from, so I can’t really expect him to understand where I’m coming from. It’s taken me a lot of years – and many more blog posts! – to even get an idea.

I have said some things that worry me about how it will all look in the fall, when I’m in charge of all the pick ups and shuttling again (I have expressed trepidation about a return to our pre-pandemic lives (mostly level of busyness) and he has assured me he cannot wait until things are back to “normal”). But right now the plan is for me leave for work early and for him to manage the mornings and if that really happens, I will be much happier than I was when I did all the drop offs and pick ups. Our daughter will also be taking the bus to and from school so that will help immensely (and if she’s not, my husband will have to figure it out because her school starts at 9:30am and mine starts at 8:30am and it’s 30- 45 minutes away).

So that is where my marriage, 17 months into a pandemic that changed almost every aspect of our lives. I feel like we weathered it (as a couple) better than we had any right to – just like every other aspect of the pandemic. I hope that, when the dust settles, I still believe that’s the case.

How did your marriage / partnership / relationship weather the pandemic?

Friendship/Identity/Writing

Thanks

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

Thanks for the kind words on my last post. Your comments actually prompted me to go back and read some of my older posts (mostly about marriage) and I was reminded that I’ve been writing here since (at least) 2015! And I used to categorize posts! I don’t even think I know how to assign categories to posts in the newer WordPress editor… maybe that is why I stopped? I feel like I just stopped caring, but maybe I’m letting “I stopped caring” be the reason for a lot of decisions that are more actually complicated.

{I definitely didn’t know where the categories were but I found them! Hurrah!}

I have to say, I enjoyed reading some of those older posts. And not all of them were “everything is shit and despair.” I tackled some hard topics with some nuance. But I also wrote a lot to process hard things, and the reality is there are fewer hard things in my life. Which is good! And I do have thoughts on things that are not hard, but writing those always feels like it’s going to take a lot more time and effort than I feel like I have. And since I don’t have the urge to write them, because writing them doesn’t help me process stuff, and also writing them is harder, it’s easier to play some Ball Sort on my phone than open up my computer.

I’m telling myself that the past 16 months were really hard and my brain was really fried, so showing up to provide commentary or insight was just more than I could handle. That may be the case. It may also be the case that I’m just not as inspired to take the time and exert the energy on writing posts that aren’t as easy (for me). That drive just might not be there.

It’s summer break now and my brain is getting some much needed down time. I’m going to take the summer to think more about what I want to write and why, and then I’ll see if I can actually publish anything that I find worthwhile. If, by the end of the summer, feeling good about writing here hasn’t gained any traction, I’ll probably take a break (and yes! I would tell you!).

In the meantime, I’m going to the North Bay to spend two nights with my three friends. I have been so worried I was going to get what my daughter had last week that I barely let myself believe I would be going. But we leave today and I’m still not sick so I’m letting myself get excited. And I am so, so excited – to get out of my house and away from my family AND to spend time with my friends. I feel incredibly grateful for this opportunity.

I will admit I’ve been in a bit of a funk since school ended. Packing my room was harder than I expected – I’ve been in that classroom for longer than I remembered and I’m sad to say goodbye. I got it packed up (enough) and now it can sit there until late July when I’ll be back to start moving my stuff to my new room. It’s a relief to have the hard part over, but there are other feelings mixed in with that relief. I’m hoping that time away from work will help me reset and I’ll return to the task with new eyes in late July.

And now I’m off to spend 48 blissful hours with three women that I enjoy so, so much. I am one very lucky lady.

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Finding my “why”

Posted on by noemikjames / 23 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “why” of this blog. Why do I keep writing it? Why, after long absences, do I come back here?

It’s not my first time trying to articulate my “why.” There have been many reasons why I’ve written over the years. In the beginning it was about working through the pain of my ectopic and the frustrations and fear of trying to get pregnant. Then it was about managing the insanity that is new motherhood (when none of my friends were going through the same). In those years I wrote my blog to be a part of something bigger that myself – the people I felt closest to were not in my physically proximity, but instead in my blogging community. I found meaning in my online space in a way I just don’t anymore.

That community is gone, it has been for a long time. I don’t really miss it anymore (it has taken me a lot of years to write that!) – and I’m not really looking to blog like I used to back then. For a while I wrote because I wanted to be a writer. I was writing and copy editing for a local mother’s group magazine and even taking some writing classes at Berkeley Extension. I started a blog under my real name so I could showcase my pieces (and my photos). But that didn’t last long. I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t LOVE the kind of writing that people might pay me for (a realization that helped me avoid asking myself the hard question of whether I could even write well enough for people to pay for my words).

As I let that dream die (it was peaceful, releasing), I started up this space because, well, I couldn’t imagine NOT writing. Stopping blogging altogether felt impossible then, I’m not so sure anymore.

Recently one of my friends found my blog. And then more recently some other friends learned of it. When they asked me what I wrote about and why, I struggled mightily to articulate my reasons. In the end all I could land on was, well I started for this reason and kept writing for these reasons and then… I just never stopped. That was the best explanation I could come up with.

“I just didn’t stop,” is not really a reason to be doing something. At least not if it isn’t bringing something tangibly positive to one’s life. I tell myself that this blog is a record, but when I returned to some early posts during the pandemic (to prove to my husband that we did NOT see my parents outside for Easter at the start of shelter-in-place!) I found nothing but matter-of-fact posts about what we could and couldn’t do and what we were were doing inside of those restrictions. There were no feelings mentioned, no emotions expressed, nothing messy written out to make sense of it. If I don’t use this space to work through the mental gymnastics of making sense of a pandemic, then what is this space even for?

These are questions I will need to answer, but I think maybe I already have. There are some posts I have banging around in my head, but I realize that I don’t write that anymore, honestly and without regard for people’s possible responses. Maybe I’ll write one of those and put it up and see how it feels. And even if it feels okay… I think maybe I just don’t have a lot of those posts to write anymore. I’m in a positive place in my life, and I have friends to talk stuff out with (which is amazing! I’ve wanted that my whole life and I finally have it!) Maybe my blog as outlived its usefulness.

Then again, maybe not.