Lately I’ve been feeling kind of lame because I don’t feel like I really accomplish all that much. Shanna is basically what I do. I keep house. Uhm… yeah. Not a lot else. When I see people posting about these humongous undertakings they are doing or how many hobbies they have I feel rather lame.
The internet just isn’t my friend anymore.
Shanna is a pretty damned big (and admirable) project. I know it probably doesn’t help, but kids are not a hobby I’d even consider. I’m just not up to it.
Also, she is one CUTE little shit! That’s what I said when T showed me her Christmas picture. He agreed. 🙂
I have a great deal of respect for your choice to be who you are and do what you do. Don’t knock yourself down – being a mommy is a LOT, and uses all of your energy. I don’t have kids yet, and when I’m not in school, I have house projects…that I haven’t gotten around to yet. (That’s my way of adding that I often feel the same way, but with no reason – since I don’t see “taking care of Shanna” as an excuse.)
On a different note: the internet is as much of a time suck for me as t.v. used to be. Sigh. (Time to go out of the house and get away from it!)
I get that way too. It’s easy for me to see the couple of dozen hobbies that all my friends do and feel all slackerish, and forget that each friend really only does one or two of them (at least, at a time). I also have a tendency to forget that people tend to post stuff they *do* or *have done*, and not so much about the hours of TV or intarwebs they surf.
And when I say “hours of TV or intarwebs they surf”, I include me.
But you don’t ENJOY knitting or sewing or sweating to the point of exhaustion! Why should you give a crap if I do? And I, well, I don’t keep house, bake loads of christmas cookies, or can massive quantities of provisions except under extreme duress. So there. We’re even.
*smiles* Well said.
For the record, you are far from the only one. I have a rather lot of friends who are extremely talented and who keep ridiculously busy. I guess I pick people who are motivated or something. I just feel no ambition lately towards much of anything…
I’m not being self absorbed, I’m using myself as an example
since you commented on my activities elsewhere today. Further, my point stands…you do things that keep you busy and that others might not
be interested in filling their time with. Give yourself some credit.
Hm. I’m not sure I’m communicating what I mean very well. I feel like the stuff I do is treading water. Yes, I keep busy. I keep busy with day to day stuff that never feels ‘done’ or like an accomplishment. I suppose that working on my house should fall into that category–it has certainly been a tremendous amount of work and my house looks much much better because of it. But for some reason, in my head, doing house stuff feels like “well duh–everyone has to do that”. I used to accomplish things. I used to have lots of hobbies and go places and be able to say, “See! I did a and b and c and d and e and f…” And I don’t have that lately.
I think that it might be most accurate to say that I don’t feel like I am doing anything for me lately and when I say I feel intimidated by other people doing stuff that is more what I mean. The people I’m feeling intimidated by are also parents–but they don’t seem to have lost themselves. Does that make a little more sense?
It’s interesting to me that you say you feel like you’ve lost yourself… from where I stand… which is not all that close but still… it seems like you still have fun and do the things you want to do, just perhaps a little less so- but this is a GOOD thing, because you’ve got your priorities right… Just don’t forget the value of a trusted babysitter and the joy of a night out having fun (maybe I should take that advice myself) but as another mom of a little one about the same age as yours… I am baffled that you can do as much as you do. As has been the case since I first met you, you are an inspiration, as a person, and as a mother.
I do get out a lot–I mostly take Shanna with me. I think that what is most frustrating to me about going out is that I want to hang out with Shanna and most of my hobbies are completely non-kid friendly (or they just start too late at night for us). It’s been challenging finding the right niche for me. Right now I bounce around doing things with a variety of random people but I don’t have a core activity thing I do and that feels less fulfilling to me.
FWIW, I have ambition-a-plenty, but no energy to back it up with. If I manage to feed myself 2 meals a day, keep my laundry from being scary, do my dishes, feed my cats and go to work, that’s a good day. I have lots of hobbies, but they aren’t getting much play these days. Making jewelry for Christmas (which I’ve been paying for in pain ever since) is about as much as I’ve got and is mostly happening cause I can’t afford to do anything else.
Actually, taking *good* care of a child is a hell of a lot of work. Anyone can pop a baby out, then ignore her when she’s inconvenient. You take the time to talk with her, to play with her, to teach her – and all of those skills will make her better off than she would have been with another parent.
Your child, ANY child, should be the most important creature in your world until they can care for themselves. Love, duty and fear all tangle together to while they are helpless and dependent. I’ve seen so *many* parents just opt out of connecting with their kids; I’ve seen too many parents let other people raise their children and I wonder what kids think when they know that a parent let them go without much fuss. I pity those kids.
But I think Shanna is pretty damned lucky to have you and Noah as parents.
I wrote a bunch more in a comment to Blacksheep above. It’s not that I feel that Shanna is an unworthy way to spend time. I just feel like I have lost me and ambition in the process.
you should sell the kid and buy a convertible sports-car with the money. you get to choose the color. i prefer red. then you can say you’re going out for a loaf of bread but, instead, drive to my house and kidnap me from this hellish life i live – i am certain nobody would even file a polie report – we then run off to, um, alabama where i can work gigilo and you can be a… pole dancer. when we get tired of that (for me, about a week), you can drop me off back at my house again and trade in the sports-car for the kid and we can claim we never really went anywhere.
how’s that sound?
You are my favorite. 🙂 Where’s creepy Santa?
HE knows if you’ve been sleeping.
HE knows if you’re awake.
HE knows if you’ve been bad, or good.
So just give up now, ’cause you’re fucked, you pervert!
LOL
you can come along too!
IF you have a “special talent.”
She can pole-dance.
I can gigolo.
What do you bring to the table?
totally unrelated, but your holiday card was wonderfully thoughtful and made me cry. It was just the exact thing I needed to read when I got home….almost as though you were in my head for this whole last week. I think I might even frame it.
I’m glad it made you so happy. 🙂 That’s why I go through all the effort! *hugs*
taking care of a little one and making a home are pretty big projects in and of themselves. It will get easier to also take care of “you” as she gets a bit older. Nothing you don’t know already, really. I certainly emphasize, sometimes I feel like I’ve been treading water for 12 years….
Fair enough. So you’re saying I shouldn’t expect this to get easier any time soon?
The hardest part for me, to transition to ‘mom’ is that i feel like i have lost a part of myself. I am most sensitive when we go out with friends, that knew me prior to Harry. I feel as if, people don’t think i have anything to say since i’m home. Like, i have no thoughts on the world or things that interest me prior to becoming a mom.
Anyway, yeah. I can relate to what you are saying. Not sure the solution (not that you were asking for one) but, its a hard feeling to absorb.
My problem is that most of my pre-kid hobbies are completely all encompassing and if you aren’t enmeshed in those worlds then they are just too busy for you. I’ve kept a couple of people from each community but it’s frustrating.
Not sure if it’ll make you feel better, but might put things in perspective… I get discouraged a lot when I read your* posts about what you guys are doing with the house, what Shanna is up to or learning, or (probably most of all) saying and what milestones she’s reached… I worry that I don’t spend enough time with Ronnie, or don’t work on words with him enough, or am not as good of a mom as I thought I would be… He is starting to talk, but is nowhere near as advanced as Shanna is… I try and tell myself that he’ll lean things and progress at his own rate, but I can’t help but be a little jealous and feel a little un-accomplished about stuff like that… I also think it’s totally awesome that you guys made her a play room and are finishing the garage… All things I wish I could say myself…
I think what my point here is that there’s always going to be people doing things you wish you could be doing, but just remember that you’re always going to be doing things someone else wishes they could do as well…
I think that being a stay at home mom is a LOT of work, and you should be very proud… look at all the baking you’ve done, and how smart and advanced your little girl is… and all the work you’ve done on the house… all of these are wonderful accomplishments that you should remember are very important and speak volumes for your self-motivation and the love you have for your family, and imho, a veritable superhero. You are not lame, you are Stay-At-Home-Mom… you should have a cape. 😉
This is a very brave, thoughtful, hard thing write. Thank you. So that you know, I don’t ‘work on’ words with Shanna. Noah and I were both really early talkers and we both babble constantly at each other and at Shanna. I’m not sure that counts as working on words. It’s just really hard to get anyone in this house to shut up. Boys are also usually much slower in language acquisition. Shanna is extremely advanced so if he was two years older than her and not talking at all I would think maybe it was time for some testing but it still wouldn’t mean anything for sure developmentally. 🙂 Every kid is different.
You are right. I’m shitty at perspective. A lot of that is just my normal stupid, “I’m not good enough” stuff going on in the back of my brain. I don’t think it would be humanly possible for me to do enough for me to feel like I was doing enough. I’m just like that. It’s a pain in the ass to be in my brain.
Thank you. Noah says I should have a cape too. 🙂
Thanks for your encouragement. 🙂
I try and remind myself that boys talk later than girls… and I suppose “work on words” is a poor way to say it…
To give an example: Tonight, durring bathtime, he had a bubble bath for the first time in a while, I pointed out the bubbles and he said “bubba” and we repeated the word back and forth a few times before moving on to “water” and “bath” I mostly just point at something and say it’s name, and if he tries to say it back, we’ll repeat the word a few times back and forth with lots of encouragement and smiles even if what he says back to me is nothing like what “I” think the word should say
Mostly I talk at him or to him about what I’m doing, or what he’s doing, or what someone else is doing… and then I try and take time whenever I can to sit down with him and we repeat words back and forth… . 🙂
I wish I could say if I was an early talker or not, Mom doesn’t remember. I was an early reader tho… and I actually tracked down the book I learned to read with, Teddy Pig and Julia’s Birthday… and amazingly enough, it’s the only non-cardboard book he’ll sit through.
anyway~ enough of my rambling… *hug*