Gratitude

2012 was a tough year.

It was a year where I finished my journey through postpartum depression.

It was a year where we found out we were having our third baby.

It was a year where we lost our third baby at 11 weeks.

It was a year of grief, of the deepest crying I've ever done, of the hardest work in our marriage we've ever had to do, and a year of leaning harder than we've ever had to lean on people.

It was the year we declared bankruptcy.

2012 was a tough year.

It was also the year I turned 30. It's a significant number because of the 0 at the end of it...and because it marks the end of the 20s, where everything magical was supposed to happen.

My 20s were magical - I graduated university, I married the love of my life, I established a writing career, I became a mother in 2009, I took a writing course with Miriam Toews, I became a mother again in 2011, I started my novel, and I learned more about myself than I ever knew existed.

To kick off my 30s, I decided I'd start a gratitude journal. The concept is nothing new. Oprah does it. There are apps for it. And Wikipedia even acknowledges it.

With 2012 being the year of really crappy stuff happening, I wanted to celebrate my new decade and 2013 with positivity. It sounds hokey and a little hippy-ish, but I was sick of only seeing the list above of all the bad stuff that happened and not remembering the good moments.

So far, I've been very faithful to it: every night before I go to bed I write down three things that were good. (I went with the List of 3 inspiration from Lauren of My Postpartum Voice - she often tweets about it and I liked the sound of "List of 3"...so I stole it. That's how that went.)

Some days I really need to hunt for things. I feel like I should be marking down extraordinary things, but most days they don't exist. It is in the hunt for three things to be especially grateful for that I realize that the ordinary good things that happen to us far outweigh the bad most days.

Some days I have to work hard to pare it down and ONLY pick three. I'm a rule follower and I have set these rules and I will follow them DAMMIT. Those are good days. :)

The most frequent thing I'm grateful for is coffee. With 2 babies 3 and under, this is not surprising. This is normal.

I think it's working, though, in helping me always look for the good. I haven't started looking for it during the day, just at night, but I feel like that is the next step. If I can find the good in reflection, then I will one day recognize the good in the moment. That sounds like an even better day.

Full disclosure

I have built this space for me online - a place where I can come and share my thoughts about any old thing that I experience or that pops into my head (scary, I know). I haven't told many people about this space because it is freeing to release what's inside of you to the unknown world. It's nice having a space for just me.

But then I told my husband about it. And although I held my breath until he read my posts, he didn't get mad for the way that I represented him here and we're still happily married.

Today, I told one of my sisters about my blog. Her response: "I don't know my sisters at all!"

Of course, this comes on the heels of discovering the Youtube channel my other sister currently posts videos to, some of which are full of anger towards the current status of things in our family.

After her initial shock, she perused some posts and decided it wasn't so bad after all.

I hope. She could have been lying...

Anyway, what's done is done. She knows now. Which means, probably, that more people will know in short order.

My little alone space going to get a bit more crowded. And that's okay with me, I think (ignore my hyperventilating...I'm sure it's completely normal and that it will pass).

So, to those who are joining my not-so-regular blog, welcome! Make yourself at home, help yourself to whatever you find here, and please, please don't hate me too much.

Understanding

As all new parents, I've had multiple "I get it" revelations about my parents on some things that previously puzzled me (other things, I'm still confused). One such revelation happened this morning...

The kid decided to sleep in this morning and by sleep in I mean she stayed in bed until 7 instead of waking for a feeding at 3:30 and getting up for the day at 6 a.m. (HUGE victory)

I, of course, woke up for both the 3:30 feeding and the 6 a.m. wake-up. Now a normal human being would simply go back to sleep and enjoy the sleep until 7 a.m., but I am no longer a normal human being - I'm a mother to a very young child...which means that I am all things to a very young child - food, sleep, comfort, etc...

And this means that I got out of bed, pumped some bottles of milk, enjoyed the quiet of the morning, watched the news which I feel guilty doing around the husband (he needs captions to watch t.v., so I try not to watch live shows around him as the captions lag and he doesn't get the same enjoyable experience that I do), and generally enjoyed being just me for a few minutes.

As a kid, I used to wonder why on earth my mom relished the thought of waking up early and having the house to herself. Now I know that that was her only moment in a long day of moments that weren't hers.

I think that this blog is going to become one of those moments for me...although I hate saying what this blog is - it puts pressure on me and inevitably makes me run away. So for now we'll say this space is an oasis...this spot is mine...and no young child or even husband can encroach on it.

For now. ;)

Love triangle

I've seen my future.

Well, okay, I've dreamed of my future. With my eyes wide open. So maybe, I've daydreamed my future.

I am dreaming of one day becoming a novelist...and not just any novelist, but one where people buy the book I write. And like it. Without getting paid or threatened to. That is the dream.

But this is not the dream that I talk about in my interviews with potential employers. The dream I talk about is different, slightly skewed for optimum brownie points, which, as we all know, make the world of job-interviews-becoming-job-offers go round.

The professional dream that I dream out loud to potential employers is the dream of being the head of a communications department - determining when and what should be communicated. Working closely with other writers and other brilliant people to send out a coherent, effective message. That is the out loud dream.

But it isn't the dream that keeps me up at night, or fills my brain with varying sentence structures and different stories. It isn't the dream that fills my mouth when I talk to my loved ones about my dream. It isn't the dream that I whisper to my slumbering husband..."You are the husband of a brilliant novelist."

I like that I have two dreams. It makes me feel like I will never tire of writing, even though that is what I'm currently doing for a living. It makes me feel like I have a barrier between the two, and they will never affect each other or cross over.

Inevitably, though, this barrier is only in my mind, and not in reality. And at some point I will hang up one of those dreams, possibly for the other. For like every other love triangle, eventually someone gets fed up with the arrangement, someone gets jealous, and someone gets too serious.

Unless, I can happily live in a polyandry world, where everyone is happy in our arrangement, because that is just the way it is.

Maybe.

Metabloggage

I always thought that blogging was just another form of writing in a journal or diary. For some, like here, this is so.

For others, though, it becomes a community effort, whereby one person writes about experiences that others can empathize with. In this instance, as found here, people gather around the not so private life of the blogger to learn and to share.

In other instances, it becomes a way to pass information (note the use of the word information, not journalistic, expository news). And in this way, as seen here, it can also become a source of income, a way of life, and a career (second note for the paragraph: this blog also makes enough money to support a household. I know, it's not fair she's so talented).

The newest blogging style I've come across is found here and here - the blogging style of taking a huge life step and turning it into a global adventure.

I don't quite think I would have the audacity nor the bravery to attempt the public-adventure style blogging, but kudos to the man with the house, and maybe in the future, the man with the wife.

For me, I'll continue writing about thoughts, about inspiration, about finding me. I probably won't make money off of my blog and I probably will never have hundreds of thousands of readers, but I will have a place that is mine. In a newly married world, with oodles of family and obligations, I need that space.