Why do I feel I do nothing? - A confession

I have a confession to make. 

When I started blogging, I was an SAHM, and at that time, the blogosphere often resounded to the strains of SAHMs justifying themselves, trying not to justify themselves, feeling angry about having to justify themselves... It probably still is, but I'm not reading it so much in my own circles, because it tends to be a preoccupation of mums with younger children than mine. Anyway, as I said in my previous post, I often chipped into the debate, and waved the "SAHM and happy" flag.

Then I got a part-time job. Very part-time - only a few hours a week. Not a very glamorous job. I mean, I wasn't running my own successful business, or heading up a department in a multinational corporation. I was a Sales Assistant in a toy shop, and on the minimum wage (though I did negotiate a 50% pay rise for my second year, which I thought was pretty good going).

The confession is this. When I got the job, I loved being able to say I had one. There was a moment when I was filling in a questionnaire, and in the section headed ‘Occupation’, instead of ticking the box ‘Not in employment’ or ‘Caring for dependents’ or whatever it was labelled, I ticked the box ‘Retail’. I loved that moment.

When people asked me what I did, I no longer had to say "Oh, I'm at home with the kids". I really liked that. Which is dreadful, because I'd so often commented on blogs "Don't say ‘I'm just at home with the kids’ - it's a really important job, the most important job you could be doing, actually. Say it with pride." I don't know if I'd convinced anyone else, but I certainly hadn't convinced myself. I really liked that I'd jumped over to the other side. But I didn't want to feel that it was "the other side". For all the rhetoric about choices, doing what's right for you and your family, etc etc, fundamentally, I think I had been looking down on myself and other SAHMs.

That’s my confession. So now, I feel bad on two counts. First, I am an SAHM and therefore don't do anything (see previous post). And second, I am outed as the kind of horrible woman who looks down on SAHMs, and think they don't do anything.

I am nothing if not honest.

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Why do I feel I do nothing?

Calling all SAHMs out there...

Why do I feel I do nothing?

I know the answer, actually. It's because

• When I had pre-school children, I used to look at mothers of school age children and think "wow, you have so many hours a day to get things done". I assumed that when my children were at school, I would have everything done in a wink, and then have time for new exciting ventures too. Now those days are here, I still don't achieve everything I want to do, and I have no time for any ventures, new, exciting, or otherwise.
• Although I know I hold family life together, and I know that is an important role, it seems like not very much. It's very invisible. It's so invisible that even I don't see it.
• For all the blog posts I've written and commented upon on this issue (and believe me, it's quite a number), and for all the encouragement I've given, and for all the times I've said "it's not a competition", somewhere deep down, I must feel it IS a competition. So although I know that life involves choices, sometimes dictated by circumstances, sometimes not, somehow I feel that being out at work AND having a family proves you are a more competent person than just having a family (just having a family...). I want to be one of those more competent people. There is a corner of me that sniffs a GCSE in "being competent" that I could be working for, or if not a GCSE, at least a gold star. 
• If I enjoy the things I do (eg supermarket shopping -  yes, I do enjoy that), then somehow I can't let myself see them as "work", and if they're not "work", then they're fun/pleasure/leisure/bunking off/slacking and I can't count them. Which is clearly ridiculous, because if I was in a job, and enjoyed elements of that job, I wouldn't feel guilty and as if I was being paid to enjoy myself. I'd just think they were part of the job.
• There is far too much Protestant Work Ethic around. Who needs to work to justify themselves in any case?
• This time a year ago, I had a part-time job and I was studying part-time for an MA. Then we moved back to Britain, and although I am trying to put those things in place again (I've had TWO job interviews in the past fortnight, go Iota!), these things take time. I find it hard to be patient. But I was also slightly relieved not to get the jobs. Even a few hours a week would put a strain on me, and on family life, and after you've moved to a new place, there needs to be a bit of slack around, even if the cost of that slack is that there's often a bit too much of it. My time will come. 

Ooh, that last one sounded a bit spot on, didn't it?

Meanwhile, yes, I suppose if we're calling a spade a spade, it would be good to say out loud that this move has involved sacrifices. They don't come anywhere near outweighing the benefits, and I'm not the only one who has made sacrifices, but it's probably helpful to look at that spade and name it. Though talking of spades just makes me think about how I've done nothing at all in our new garden, and how can that be? because I have so many free hours a day, (though looking at the state of the house you wouldn't think so), and everyone likes to do gardening, right? and with the amount of free time I have, since my children are at school all day, I could be growing our own organic vegetables, so I'll just add that to the list of things I should do but haven't done.

Waah.

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Thoughts on blogging

There’s another reason I’m sad, as well as yesterday's general grief. When the Cyber Mummy conference details were published, I looked at them, and thought “well, those sessions are not really for me, but I’ll get something out of them, I’m sure, and I’d love to meet up with everyone”. But for a few days it’s been really getting under my skin, and I’ve been trying to work out why. I mean, I’ve said more than a few times that I’m not bothered if other people want to work with PR companies, get their blog into a league table, worry about their reader stats. It’s just not for me. That’s my position: the blogosphere is big enough for all of us, right?

But I confess that I do also sense an increasing disconnect, which the conference has thrown into focus for me, between where I am, and where the whole mummy blogging ship is sailing. And I feel that disconnect as something of a bereavement. I really do. I just hadn’t quite realised it before in that way. It’s partly because I’m simply growing out of the world I used to thrive in. It’s hard to share the intensity of feeling about the woes of potty training and sleep deprivation when you’re out of that stage of life. Mummy blogging will always be more about babies and toddlers than school kids. I know that. I notice that a lot of the more mature mummy bloggers are writing for Powder Room Graffiti. It’s almost like a class reunion over there. But I don’t feel I quite fit there either.

So these are mostly my issues. Growing up, growing out, moving on. (I blame it on being an expat: we think too much about moving on.)

But I also do think there IS something sad for the majority of mummy bloggers here. I’m going to say this, and I’m not going to be popular. Yes, my “there’s room for us all” philosophy has a lot of truth in it, but it’s more complicated than that. I do feel that the more blogging becomes the carrier of commercial interests, and the more that becomes the norm and the expectation, the harder it is to exist without buying into that. And that represents a loss of some kind.

The phenomenon of blogging has been amazing in giving people a voice. People who wouldn’t otherwise have much of a voice: mums at home, lonely expats, people with cancer, couples struggling with infertility, women who’ve lost babies. What have these people found with that voice? They’ve found two things, I think. Connection. Moments when they’ve read a blog post and felt “yes, that’s JUST how it is – how lovely that someone has been able to encapsulate it so perfectly in words”. Or when they’ve written a post and provided that moment for someone else, who’s left a comment to tell them so. There’s something about not being alone in an experience which is terribly important to the human condition.

First, connection. Second, writing. I know for sure that I’m not the only one who has found that the process of taking an experience or a feeling, and wrestling it into words, words that others will comprehend, somehow makes a big difference. Sometimes it offers insight, sometimes it has a transformative effect. I haven’t worked it all out yet, but I just know that it is important. Blogging has taken its place in the long history that story-telling and debate has occupied in cultures down the ages. Being able to make people laugh, cry, understand… this is an important thing.

There. I’ve said my piece. I’m sure I’ll come to Cyber Mummy, because I can’t see myself staying away, and even an old Luddite like me can recognise that I could do with some ideas on tarting up my blog a little. This isn’t meant to be a polemic about the conference or its organizers. I can see that for many people, having windows opened on to ways that your blog can earn you money, or freebies, can be tremendously confidence-boosting (quite apart from the value of the items themselves). If the commercial world is interested in your opinion, you have a voice that you didn’t have before. It’s a different voice to the one I have, or want, but it’s a voice, for sure. I can see that it’s a big ship that’s a-sailing in that direction, so I guess it must be me who is different (not wrong, just different).

But when I’m sitting in that session ‘figuring out whether good writing matters’, don’t catch my eye, because I’ll either cry or get an attack of the giggles. Because I know that for me, and for many, that is something we got figured out way back.

Well, that’s where I am. I know that things move on, and that new things come. So I suppose the challenge for me now is to find where and how I can continue to pursue my own interest, and leave others to pursue theirs, without making it into a conflict or a competition. Part of me wants to run an alternative conference (at a different time to Cyber Mummy) which would have this kind of a schedule:

Opening session: yoga (so we’d all come in yoga bottoms, and therefore not have to worry about what to wear)

Morning session: why did you start blogging? How has it changed you? Has it been entirely positive? What about the negatives?

Lunch: very long, lots of opportunity to chat, requirement to move between tables at least twice in order to mix everyone up, definitely involving cake and/or chocolate

Afternoon session: is your blog anonymous? Why? How does your online persona differ from your real self? Is that significant? Do you have a vision for the future of your blog?

Tea: a drink with jam and bread

Final session: Cyber-friends: as real as real life friends? Friendship as part of the whole blogging experience.

I’m kind of half serious about this, because these are the kind of things that interest me about mummy blogging. Maybe people are getting together to discuss these kinds of things already, and I just haven't found out. If so, please point me in the right direction. Otherwise, if enough of you fellow touchy-feelies out there are interested, maybe I could hire a life coach to be a facilitator, and a caterer, and a venue (or get a sponsor to let us use their premises), and… just thinking out loud here.

And next… The Garage Sale!

[I want to add that I hadn’t realized that Cyber Mummy is not put on by BMB. That does change things a little, though I think the Cyber Mummy conference has just served as a focus for things I’ve already been mulling over in a more vague way.]