Roadblocks

My son is almost 6. When I decided to get married, settle down, and have kids I wanted a gaggle of them, 4 minimum. Call me crazy but I would have been ecstatic with 6. I don’t have 6, or 4, or even 2. I have 1, and there is no sign of more in the immediate future. People with kids know two things, 6 years old comes way to fast, and at 6 your kids are so different. They can DO things, really do things. Go to friends houses alone, play in their room alone. (Many people send their kids to school alone, but we homeschool.) At 6 your child has an independence from you that is both terrifying and joyous. “AHHHHHHHH” you can breath, you can pee with the door shut, sometimes. You can go back to work, or tackle a hobby.

At the end of 2012 I reached the point where I questioned “What do I, Alicia Simon, do now?” I could run a craft business. I could go back to blogging, something I’ve done on and off for over 10 years. I could start some other business. What do I want to do? If I run a business, what do I want to do? to make? to sell? If I blog what would I write about? Now, there is one thing you need to know about me, and this is no doubt going to be a running thing, I am a slacker. I trained my kid to pick snacks in the morning so that I can sleep until 10. We unschool. It is January 27, and my Christmas decorations are boxed up sitting in the living room. I joked that I could run a blog called “The Seasonal Slacker” which was all about NOT doing all the seasonal stuff the “perfect” blogs do. Linkys could include things like most out of season wreath.

My son in some recent snow. And yes that dead plant is in a Halloween Cauldron.

Then I looked at my son. My amazing nearly six year old boy, and I knew time is going to fast. When he is grown, gone, that could be it for me, empty nest. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to create memories, create traditions. Traditions that he will continue on, traditions that he will remember, smile about, and perhaps even come home for. Traditions and memories that I can look back at, remember, savor when I’m home, alone. In six more years, that brief blink of time that has already passed he will be 12, and then when I blink again he will be 18 years old. 18.

I live over 500 miles from my parents. I moved away gladly, and I’d be lying if I said I enjoy visiting. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my folks, watching my Dad be goofy, seeing what neat little trinkets my Mom has collected. But I don’t flock home for holidays, or even have any memories of them really. I don’t want that. Your children will grow up, they will not always need you, but you want them to want you. I want my son to move as far as as he needs to be happy, BUT I want him to call, to write, to remember.

And my blog topic was decided. I started doing blog set up, cool title, seasonal background, set ups with my name on everything from Google+, Facebook, Youtube, even Etsy just in case. I started brainstorming topics, pinning on Pinterest, making lists of possible blog ideas. Then it happened,

Road Block Number One.

I DON’T want to be another “perfect mommy blogger.” Posting pictures of how together I am, or at least am pretending to be. I have no intention of making an amazing cake pop bouquet for my kid’s friends for Valentines.Truth be told I hate cake pops. The baker does all that work, and the adorable yumminess is gone in one bite. I do not intend to make a wreath for my front door for every single frickin’ holiday known to man. When my son is grown will he care that I made wreaths and blogged about it? Every time I thought of a subject to share, to inspire you, I would research. I’d pour over pins at pinterest, pictures on flickr, google images searches, and I’d find perfect after perfect after perfect. If you want to read a perfect blog, there are so so many out there for you. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be real. I want to create memories, I want to create a life, not a picture perfect idea of what life could be. And so writing has been hard. I sat at my work space every day, any spare moment I could, and I’d look at pictures, and I’d brainstorm, and I’d type, and I’d try so hard. Then

 

Road Block Number Two

My family, all three of us, got a virus of flu-like proportions. We don’ts know that it was the flu, but we don’t know that it wasn’t either. My husband is the only one that had a flue swab done, and his was not the flu. We laid in the master bedroom, all together, one big bundle of sick. We’d take turns chugging our doses of natural honey based cough syrup and we’d sleep in piles of blankets, one persons foot and another persons arm the only thing under one cover, and three feet and a cat under another. My desk became covered with medicine bottles, dirty tea cups, and abandoned toys. I didn’t write, I didn’t even attempt it, but when I was beginning to feel better I thought about it. I thought about my first roadblock. Perfection. The word stuck in my mouth like the nighttime-sleepy-achey-coughy-feel-like-I’m-dying- medicine.

How can I blog, about this subject that I care about, and not be another perfect blogger? How can I make it less about what others are doing, and more about me? I’m still not entirely sure. I know two things, I can start by living and doing, and I can write about what happens. I hope you stick around to read about it. I can’t promise it will always be good, I can’t promise it will always be inspiring, but I can promise I am not ever going to be perfect.