Two years ago I took on blogging at the suggestion of a nurse to tell my C-Section story. I wanted to share my heartache with other moms who might feel the same. I quickly changed the pace of my blogging posts though from this narrative of my life and emotions. I’m not a writer. I was a Health Professional turned Stay at Home Mom. My involuntary reaction was to share facts, research, data, lists. I scrambled aimlessly to have a ‘niche’. Felt this imaginary deadline to have regular posts. I needed ‘pinnable’ posts and great images. And as any blogger knows too well, the drive to continually accrue more followers and page visits.
As an inspiring woman pointed out to me recently, I have too many rules. She’s right (in an eerily Jedi sort of way). The more I think of this statement the more I realize it’s a rusty gate into an untended garden of my heart, possibly inhabited by rabid raccoons and lots of thistle. So I’ll just close that gate for a little longer.
From day-one we learn life as a series of rules. This is how you eat, how you share, how you talk. Then we pick the rules that make us feel safest and they mature into the standards, habits and limits of our day-to-day life. Everything contained by these rules is guarded, predictable and manageable.
This pillow goes on the couch this way. This is how I will love you. I can’t wear black shoes with a brown belt. You have to apologize to me in this manner. I can’t do that activity, I have kids. I’m just a blogger, not a writer.
The rules in my life are endless, the thought of letting them go make me spaz out. But I’ve got to start somewhere. I’ve recently learned the freedom, and made a promise to myself, to start doing the opposite of everything I currently do. Every mindless reaction I have…every little thing that makes me anxious….every way I try to control it….I have to do the opposite of everything I usually do.
So I’ll start small. Start with a simple label. I’m a blogger; can I call myself a writer?
I loved this article that outlined blogging as one part writing and one part networking, and where the two meet is called the SWEET SPOT. I want to go to there.
I need to find this sweet spot because even though I don’t call myself a writer, I need to write. Mostly because I’m trying to get the Scottish woman in my head narrating my life to shut up and writing what she says seems to do that.
I also need to blog because it is an outlet. For my mundane days, for my hectic days, for my nerdy meanderings, for my heartaches. Writing is a stream from my heart into the world, and blogging is the inlet of the world back into my life. It is engagement with (you!) other moms, other Lady Nerds, other women who take too many pictures of their kids and like to day drink cause they’re too old for hangovers. There is an ebb and flow that keeps me company and sets a pace for what can otherwise feel like a stale day as a stay at home mom. There is a conversation that I can participate in while in my pajamas. From simple to moving dialogue around womanhood and identifying with your uniqueness in and beyond motherhood.
So here is to a new start of identifying the rules I impose and giving myself permission to break them. Starting with blogging, because seriously, that raccoon is foaming at the mouth; I’ll need a rabies vaccine before I open that gate into my heart.
First rule I’m letting myself break. I’m not just a blogger, I’m a writer. I am a writer…. because I write.
What rule will you let yourself break today? Share it!