“We’re all just pushing along, trying to figure it out”…in which I start my blog and explain why.

This is not the first time I have blogged.

In fact, there are several blogs out there in the depths of the internet with just one post on them. I can’t even remember what they are called, let alone the password for me to carry on there. You see, there lies my problem. I love the idea of blogging. I love writing, being creative and communicating. My problem has always, however, been audience. So this time I have vouched to persist and keep writing, and how I’ve done this is to decide that my primary audience is, wait for it, me.

I recently wrote something. I sat down one evening, just me and the laptop, and I wrote. And you know what, it felt good. By trade, I’m teacher, an English teacher at that, and so writing and reading has always been a core part of my life. But here’s where it all went haywire. Nearly five years ago I had my first daughter, and two years after that another followed. You see, children in my case have derailed my brain, not my life, just my brain. For the past five years I have been first and foremost Mummy, and I am just beginning to grab some more of me back. This is not a complaint. I love being Mummy, but the time has come to start getting me back, and starting this blog is one way of doing it. There are big plans for the next two years in ‘Operation Find Myself’ and I’m starting with my brain.

Over the last few weeks I have been chatting to friends, in real life and online (although thankfully for me these two worlds do crossover) and they have been so encouraging in my ideas. Thank you – you know who you are. Through these conversations it occurred to me what I was doing wrong before when I tried blogging. I will try to explain here:

1. I didn’t have enough time. Being a stay at home mum can be as busy as you want it to be. I chose to be very busy. We play, we create, we go out lots. When they are tiny it is all focused on poos, wees and feeding, and yes they sleep, but I took the advice to rest while they did (or at least watch reruns of Jeremy Kyle or binge on DVD box sets!). Now they are getting older they play together, there is kindy and school (next year), there is more time for me. I am not planning on going back to full time work until they are both at school in two years.
2. I chose a theme. I have attempted to blog about teaching, which I am very passionate about, but ran into issues about privacy etc…I worried about wrongly mentioning students in class or my school being identified. I tried parenting but see #1 here…no time. This time I am going to write about what ever takes my fancy. I already have some ideas. They are wide ranging, and if I were to have a theme it just wouldn’t work. Will it affect who reads it? See below #3.
3. Most importantly, I worried too much about who was going to read it. Who would read it? Would they like it? What would people think about me? Well, I’m older and a little wiser now and I realise that life is too short to have these worries. As I said earlier, I am writing this for me, and hope that somebody will eventually come on this journey with me, but it’s not the be all and end all.

So here I am, first post nearly done. This time I promise to be back and write some more. What’s to come? Expect some posts about social media, friendship, fandoms, parenting, relationships, reading.

This is me. Come along for the ride.

Jx