Wow, am I Bad at This…

I was “back but not back” in JULY OF FREAKING 2015. That’s perilously close to a full year ago. I am lame. Seriously. I don’t mean to be, but it’s hard to gin up enthusiasm for something you don’t get paid to do when you ALREADY DON’T GET PAID TO DO ANYTHING. (teehee)

Honestly, in my lawyer days I performed legitimate work in exchange for legitimate pay. It was a simple, straightforward transaction. And since I lived alone, that was the entirety of my work. I had a title, an office, an expense account, and a regular paycheck. When I came home from said office, I took care of myself – but it could hardly be called work because I did what I wanted, when I wanted – even the things I didn’t particularly like doing (see e.g., #laundry, #grocery shopping, #tidying – the actual #cleaning being accompliaed by a fabulous #CleaningService) couldn’t really be considered “work” because they were done on my timeframe (sometimes with ridiculously long spans of time in between, hence my ginormous drawer of underwear and equally ginormous dry cleaning bills to avoid said #laundry).

Then I “retired” (translation: got paid to stop working – a VERY nice bit of work if you can get it!) and NOTHING I did was work. For a full-on year, I literally did nothing I didn’t want to do – it was #glorious.

Then I met the man who became The Husband, which led to The Marriage, The Step-Kids, and eventually The Toddler. Now it seems like all I do is work – with no title (beyond Mommy – and if ever a title was dubiously granted, that is the one), no office (I share that space with The Husband AND the school supply closet AND my myriad crap that has no other home), no expense account (beyond the one for sneakers that are constantly outgrown, fruit snacks, and K-cups to fuel the caffeine habits of myself, The Husband, and The Teenage Step-Daughter), and most definitely no paychecks of my own. DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND – I love my family, thank the universe for them everyday, and also thank it for the First World Problems associated with being lucky enough to stay at home and raise said kids. THAT BEING SAID (#caveat), I spend my days and nights working. Laundry, cooking, driving, tidying, cleaning, making lunches, solving problems, playing (YES – with a toddler this constitutes work)… It’s not bad work (#MommyOptimism), but it’s unpaid, unending, generally unacknowledged, and often under-appreciated – or at least it feels that way.

Which brings us full circle back to our beginning – it’s hard to gin up enthusiasm for MORE work that is unpaid, unending, generally unacknowledged, and often under-appreciated like blogging/reviewing…
Still, if I did it properly, it wouldn’t necessarily BE those things (unlike #MommyWork, notably and irritatingly) – so I am going to try to give it a legitimate go this round. It’s not going to look like it used to. You’re highly unlikely to get daily posts out of me, unless you want to hear me bitch and moan (and BELIEVE ME, no one does – just ask The Aforementioned Husband). It’s also not going to be the purist “only writing/reading” that it used to be – at least for a while. My life is not about writing/reading like it used to be in any way, shape or form. I still get to read, probably more than the realities of my life should dictate – and I have The Again Aforementioned Husband as well as The Aforementioned Toddler to thank for that (because they are both surprisingly amenable to seeing me sane and at least modestly cheerful as much as anything else, teehee again), so there’s likely going to be a fair amount of reviews/references to reading on here. There will probably be a fair amount of mommy-related stuff too – which I swore I’d not do, but can’t really avoid since the reality of my daily life is that it centers around being a mommy. It’ll be a work in progress, and I hope you’ll bear with me and offer comments, both positive and negative when necessary. I’m anticipating losing some of the old crowd (if anyone is still actually around teehee) as a result, but there’s naught to be done for that – hopefully I’ll pick up a few new like-minded (or at least like-situated) people as a result. Either way, it is what it is – both my life and this blog, teehee – and will be what it will be. #OverplayedCliche

BTW, are you impressed with the hashtag crap?? I don’t use social media beyond this blog and the occasional tweet or FB post to get free things, teehee, but I’m desperately trying to seem like I’m not the Luddite Dinosaur I really am in the hope that it’ll pay off in free stuff somehow… 😉

Thoughts/comments are always welcome. It takes a surprising amount not only of effort but also of shameless ego to blog – you have to assume that people are actually interested enough in your life/mind/thoughts to read regularly… I guess I have as healthy an ego as the next girl, but please feel free to poke it whenever you think I need it. Cheers and hopefully this will actually take this time!

jill-e