After a few weeks of encouragement from a Stateside blogger (and she knows who she is) whose admirable work I have been following with keen interest, I am eager now to dip my own toe, gold painted nail and all, in the metaphorical water and start my own blog. I increasingly find Facebook unsatisfactory in that I feel dependent on an audience of signed-up Friends who may or may not be interested in the minutiae of my life and/or thoughts, and worse, may be critical of them and think badly of me - and maybe even cease to want to be my Friends - or even my friends. Whereas I feel certain that no-one will read this, and therefore am a little less self-conscious about it.
Does this mean my blog is an opportunity for self-indulgent diarising, in the manner of an over-emotional, hormoned-up teenager, laden with adolescent angst, whose writings will - she hopes - never be read, at least until she is a relaxed married thirty-something career woman? Maybe, but without the desperate locking of the diary and concealment of it and its key in separate locations in my poster-splattered bedroom. However, I prefer to think of it as a journey. Gosh, how corny is that?
The blog name reflects the title of a novel given to me for my fortieth birthday by aforementioned Stateside blogger, which charts the progress of a mother with a number of children and a busy stressful "big" city job, and the classic juggling that accompanies it.
My own experience is vastly different, in that I fled the "out at" workplace after 14 years, shortly before the birth of my first child and have not darkened its door since. With my second child due to arrive mere weeks after the first is dispatched to school for the first time I feel assured (I think) of another five years off "work" at least. As a "doer" however, this puts me not in the bracket of gym, hairdos and cappuccino mum (though I enjoy the occasional swim, and could drink frothy milky coffee (decaff, natch, in my present condition) till I was blue in the face (note to self - do internet search to see if drinking lots of coffee affects skin pigmentation)) but a committee Mum, a "homemade cakes for me and my friends to buy back" Mum, a future PTA Mum, who has run the toddler group and had a go at the preschool, etc etc etc. At times, with meetings to prepare for, newsletters to edit and produce, deliveries to make, the endless cakes to bake, rota duties to meet, as well as a young child to bring up, elderly parents, a home to run and with an oft-absent husband, I have wondered whether being a professional juggler with a "real job" might not be an easier option. At least I might feel as though I could exercise a little control in my life from time to time. I do ask myself "I don't know why I do it."
Perhaps in these words I might begin to forge an answer.
