Gone Fishin'

Gone Fishin', originally uploaded by maelid.

Parenthood has really curtailed my creative blogginz. If you take a look at my flickr account, you might think that Ian and I had vanished from the earth along with anything & everything that is not Max. To some degree, you would be right. Parenting for me feels like a permanent state of adjustment. Constantly shifting priorities, schedules and moods to best live in the moment. Especially now that I am back to work. Going back to work is incredibly hard, but not for any of the reasons I anticipated. I miss my leeetle fuzzywumpers like the dickens, to be sure -- but this transition has been emotionally challenging for me mainly due to my inability to accept imperfection & disorganization from myself. I know, I know -- mom, I can literally hear you laughing at that one, but seriously. The time it takes to be an organized working mom is crushing me. Come into my home on the best day and likely you won't find it in perfect order but I think most people are able to accept disorder and move on with living. That acceptance has been impossible for me to find recently and some days have been really really tough. I have been obsessing about cleanliness, organization & perfection to a degree that is just not healthy. Luckily I am married to a wonderfully helpful & supportive man who is a good listener and can usually help pull me out of my head funk and see the upside to things. For me, right now this feels bigger than that. And looking at that sweet funny face above I realize there is so much more at stake now than there ever has been. Post-partum depression affects a lot of women in a lot of different ways. This blog has been one of those things on my mind that has been taking up space. Even though I haven't been updating it, I have felt this pressure to update it, but also an inability to update it because whatever I put up here woudn't be perfect. I heard some congresswoman on the radio the other night talking about the S-Chip program when I was driving home from work. She was urging her fellow lawmakers to pass the bill giving healthcare to millions of uninsured children even though it was not a perfect bill. Her statement was something like "Don't let perfect get in the way of good." I've been repeating this to myself ever since. It really cuts to the heart of where I'm at these days. I've decided to get some professional help for how I'm feeling and I need to cut out of my mind all the parts that are just about inconsequential worries.

So I just need to say out loud that I'm not going to be here for a while. Just to get this off my mind. I'm not saying I won't be back, but it could be a while. Thanks for understanding.