A thousand apologies...

I'm not sure where to begin. My mom left for her home in Canada about a week and a half ago. She had been here with us since November. I love my Mom, but I shouldn't live with her. She is toxic to me and the last month is always the hardest. It’s a shame too, because she really tries to help out and we should totally appreciate her, but she tends to be a very critical and demanding person and that puts such a strain on the whole family. We breathe a collective sigh of relief when she finally leaves.

I can’t even tell you how much this saddens me. My mother has done more for my children then all of their other grandparents combined, yet they dread her arrival and cheer her departure. How I wish it were the other way around. My eldest has been feeling this way for awhile and it’s not surprising, she treats him the same way she treated me when I was his age and I resented it too. The youngest is just starting to show signs of feeling this way and it hurts to see it happening again.

For the last month or so I’ve found myself pulling back away from everything just out of self-preservation. I don’t call, I don’t write, I don’t go to church, I’ve dropped off the face of the earth. That’s actually kind of frighteningly easy to accomplish when you work from home. It’s weirdly illogical to me. It seems like I would be craving human companionship instead of dreading it. Not only have I not written anything here, but (and this is difficult to admit) I’ve stopped reading blogs almost entirely. My friends on the side bar over there? I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I do get busier with work this time of year, but, I don’t know, something is different this time.

So, I've spent the last week and a half trying to extricate my cranium from my gluteus maximums. I’ve called a few people, done a little yard work, saw the Blue Men, etc. Seriously! Back in December my eldest and I volunteered for the phone bank at WGVU and I somehow talked myself into making a $200 contribution for premium seats. We were in the 17th row and it was really quite awesome. (Funny, Ebo thought the scalpers were outside the VanAndel. LOL!) Seriously though, I worked for them for 6 years but I was a believer in public broadcasting before I got there so we volunteer frequently. Last night we were on the radio! I like to say “You can take the girl out of public broadcasting, but you can’t take the public broadcasting out of the girl!” (Yes, I’ve actually said this. Pretty cumbersome and annoying now that I’ve typed it, heh, GAWD, I’m such an ass!)

Of course pledge drives segue perfectly into taxes and I’m still not done with my taxes but I’m not concerned because I’m pretty sure I’m going to owe them. I’m self employed so, hey, what’s the rush? Might as well hang on to my money as long as I can! I’ll say I’m going to work on it this weekend, but honestly, I may be at the post office at 11:59 PM on April 15th.

Meanwhile I’ve been taking a good long look around this house and to be fair, there are a great many things the Fly Lady might qualify as "things which do not bring me joy." My minimalist friends would have a panic attack if they saw my garage. It’s not as bad as it looks, but that doesn’t really make it any better.

This blog, or the absence of blogging, if you will, is certainly on the list of things that could be cut. I read blogs for over 2 years before I finally started one. I think I was under the impression that I had something to say because I always seemed to have something to say on other people’s blogs so it just seemed logical. But truthfully, I would have been far better suited to this in my twenties when I was wont to spill my life story to any passing stranger. These days though, I value my privacy more and although I’d like to say I’ll continue it. I can’t promise that’s true. See, I can’t really talk about the things that are really going on. I feel like I took a huge risk today in talking about my Mom because there are people who read this who know my mom and I don’t really want it getting back to her. No matter what I say, no matter how kind I try to be, it won’t be enough. She’d be furious and she’d never let me forget it. So I may continue to write, but I feel it’s only fair to let you know that I’ll be holding back. Don’t be surprised if I delete a few posts here and there, either.

Reading blogs became a kind of addiction for me in what I suppose is the usual manner. One good blog links to another, pretty soon you feel like you’ve discovered a whole new community you didn’t even know existed, populated by people you think you’d like to know better, racking up way too many hours a day just keeping track of your favorites! (Then there’s the commenting, which, I suppose I should have stuck with, ahem.)

This has happened to me before so I should have recognized it sooner. I was following events at The Elephant Sanctuary for some time on a chat group. It was my first foray into web communities. Soon, I started to feel obligated to read more threads. Then if I commented I felt obligated to follow the rest of the conversation in case someone responded to my comment. There were always a variety of fund raisers going on and I felt obligated to donate to them until after awhile I just felt tapped out by all the obligations. It was crazy! Having a rather addictive personality, I didn’t really notice until it became a problem for me. I was spending way too much time there when I was supposed to be working and I finally had to abandon that group.

Ironically, I stumbled into the blogging world while working. I was looking for a particular client’s contact record and typed “re marketer” into Google instead of the appropriate field. (They were kind of close together.) When I realized what I’d done I thought, okay, let’s just see if she comes up on Google just for the fun of it. But the first site I came to was A Little Pregnant. She was talking about visiting an re, only her re was a reproductive endocrinologist. Well, long story short, she’s an amazingly funny and deeply moving writer and it was my slow time of the year so I had a little free time. I started reading and before you know it, I was hooked.

When you work from home, nobody wants to hear you bitch about your job and honestly, I don’t have too much to complain about. But I have to admit that being self employed is a lot harder then I thought it would be. I really thought I had the self-discipline to do this but it’s very easy to procrastinate. Online communities, chat groups, blogging; all of these things are insidious tools for advanced procrastination. This can be a real problem when you’re the primary bread winner. This is why I had to back away from it.

Please don’t be offended that I haven’t visited you or commented lately. I’ve just been too wrapped up in my own crap. I actually feel better now that I’ve rambled on like this for a few pages. I seem to be very good at starting things but I’m not so hot on the maintenance side. I guess I was really thinking by not writing regularly enough to develop much of a following. I disappoint less people that way. See, it shouldn’t be like this! Blogging and journaling should be a positive thing, not a source of guilt, shame and anxiety. Or so I say.