My First Blog (.. or "What on Earth has compelled me to do this?")

If someone had told me five years ago that I would ever write a blog, I wouldn't have believed them. (That assuming that I knew what a blog was five years ago, I can't quite remember.) I, unlike some of my circle of family and friends, have never been prone to public self-disclosure. Putting my thoughts out into the world of the Internet could not be more public, aside from the fact that few people will likely ever read this blog. So what is driving me to this?

About three and a half years ago, I left the world of full-time legal practice and entered the world of full-time mommy practice. I have a beautiful three year old daughter and have just welcomed a son three months ago. (He is also beautiful - er, I mean handsome. The point is, I have adorable kids.) I love my life at home with them -my crazy and frustrating life - and I would not trade it for anything. But there are aspects of my former professional life that I miss.

Most days, especially in the early baby days with my daughter, I missed the really mundane aspects of working life. Showering regularly. Going to Starbucks. Talking to adults. Wearing nice clothes. Peeing by myself. On a more profound level, I missed the automatic respect that my profession used to command. Not that I spent my time as a lawyer feeling prestigious and respected; it just that the contrast with how society as large views the stay at home mom is so stark. In a world where your value is often judged by how much money you make, making "nothing" means that SAHM are often perceived as not particularly valuable. On the rare occasions that I am out in the world interacting with new people, I'm not asked for my opinion about world events in the way I had been previously. As if my newly acquired encyclopedic knowledge of children's programming means that I am no longer capable of keeping up with, and forming insights, about current events. (I am, thank you very much.)

But why have I turned to blogging? As time has moved forward, I find now that I miss the most about my job is the writing. Let me make this perfectly clear, when I was practicing law full-time, I never did any personal or creative writing. But I think because I was constantly writing for professional purposes, I satiated my desire to write enough that I didn't notice what I was missing. In the absence of any professional writing, I find myself compelled to write something else. With no court documents to draft, that leaves personal writing of some type or another.

But why share? This one is trickier for me to analyze. I'd have to say it started with Facebook; enjoying writing status updates and enjoying reading those written by others. Recently a friend turned me on to Twitter. I'm really enjoying Twitter - not the least of which is allows me to passively stalk famous people that I either admire or have become interested in solely because of their Twitter persona. (I have also found it to be a great way to for people share interesting links.) Twitter, for the uninitiated, is also referred to as "micro-blogging", as you are only able to "tweet" in 140 characters. I have found the character limit constricting - I dislike misspelling things on purpose and I have a tendency to put two spaces after a period (which I keep having to correct on my tweets). Also, I would like to petition twitter for 141 characters for people from Canada and the U.K.; the extra character so we can spell "colour" correctly. Up until recently, my updates were more or less for that one friend that introduced me to Twitter, but I still really enjoyed it.

What did I like about the phenomena of sharing my thoughts? Well, I am certainly not the first person to make this observation, but being a stay-at-home mom is very socially isolating. I found this is actually increasing as my daughter gets older. Now to arrange a "play-date" (which is more about a mommy date than anything else), I have to deal with competing preschool and rec centre class schedules. Also, have to wait until all children concerned are relatively healthy, or else risking being one of those social pariahs that make other people's kids sick. Since all children appear to be little walking petri-dishes, waiting for a clean bill of health in two or more families can mean months before we all get together. I myself am now just getting a new cold, without having ever gotten over the previous one. (My sense is that for the foreseeable future, "less sick" is my new "healthy".)

So, here I am, writing out my thoughts and putting it out in the world. Blogging allows me the freedom to ramble on - no character limits here! It's not quite a message in a bottle asking that the Internet save me from isolation, but that's probably not too far off the mark.

Finally, my chosen blog title might require some explanation. In case it's not absolutely clear, I do not regret my choice to stay at home with my children. (Indeed, I am fortunate that it was a choice for me.) I know that I would miss them so much more than I ever miss legal practice. I refer to myself as a "semi-retired" lawyer, because at this point, I'm not sure that I'll ever go back to that. But full-time motherhood isn't exactly easy either. I've named this blog "mostly mommy", because although I may be mostly mommy, I am not only or entirely mommy. So, even if I only ever blog about my kids, if this blog helps me to carve out some small space for me to be me, so much the better!

Cindy