We are taking a well-deserved break here at Up With Moms and enjoying a European vacation. I am luxuriating not only in the beautiful sights of London and Paris, but in the downtime between sightseeing. I came across this interesting article on The Juggle, the Wall Street Journal's blog about balancing work and kids, during a down period (yey high speed internet access in Paris!!!). What do you think, is the US waging a war against moms?
When I first started this blog, I envisioned writing insightful, thought-provoking posts that would change the way moms thought of themselves, inspire them to action which would eventually lead to new and improved public policies that made life practically perfect for moms, ultimately achieving total world domination.
I've always been slightly overambitious.
Turns out that when you spend 50+ hours a week working toward curing cancer not to mention shaping two growing girls into healthy, loving, intelligent and productive human beings, there's not a whole lot of time for much else. Thus, my most recent provocative posts on Slacker Vacation Moms and spending Father's Day rollerskating (which was very fun, by the way).
Lately I've felt like a star batter up at the plate just standing at home plate letting every perfect pitch just fly by. So many wonderful stories to ponder. So little time.
If I did have time, I would have written about Time magazine's fascinating look at "The Future of Work" which hypothesizes that in the future, jobs will be more flexible, the corporate ladder will become a corporate lattice to accommodate the growing demand for greater work-life balance and that women will continue to rise to the top. If I wasn't running around with end-of-school activities, I would have commented on this interesting NYT column "Liberated and Unhappy," a commentary on a study that revealed that while women have more choices than ever before, it may have inadvertently led to decreasing satisfaction with their lives. And if I didn't have the summer lazies, I would have incited everyone to action around each of the 10 Momsrising alerts that I've received about everything from health care reform to nutrition standards in schools. I did think about writing about the free bumper sticker they were offering because I loved the slogan, "Changing More than Diapers." But, ya know, a girl's gotta sleep.
In my never-ending quest to find peace and sanity in my life, I've had to come to grips lately with what this blog really is about for me -- something just short of world domination -- a simple source of enjoyment. I still plan to write provocative posts from time to time. But in my spare time. For now.
Well, it's the holidays and you know what that means. Time to pile a thousand more to-dos on top of the already unrealistic and overflowing list of to-dos.
I'm sure, like me, you're scouring the Internet for inexpensive holiday gifts for everyone you know and probably some people you hardly know but feel compelled to buy gifts for. And while you're trying oh-so hard to find gifts that are not too expensive because the economy has sucked the life out of your bank account, you're putting additional pressure on yourself to find gifts with meaning because that's what the holidays are truly about -- meaning. And you're scouring the Internet for holiday card deals, but not just any deals -- deals for recycled cards because it's all about being green. And you're trying to figure out how to upload your goddamn holiday picture with your lovely family and your fake smile into the photo card template which you now have spent WAY too much time on because you couldn't find just the right photo and then the photo you tried to use was too low-res so you had to redo it. AND because you don't have enough to do, you're about to bake four dozen homemade cookies for the neighborhood holiday cookie exchange because you're the freaking President of the freaking neighborhood Women's Club that you totally didn't have time to take on, but you did anyway for some ungodly reason. AND OF COURSE they can't be any old cookies, they have to be the ULTIMATE peanut butter cookies with the Reese's peanut butter cups in the middle that you bake in a mini-muffin pan because regular cookies just aren't freaking special enough, LIKE YOU DON'T HAVE A FULL TIME JOB ALREADY????!!!!!
Oh, wait. That could be just me.
Except I don't think it is just me. It's a sickness, I admit it. And you need to admit it too. When did we decide we had to be Martha Stewart with the perfect holiday card, giving out the perfect holiday gifts and serving up the perfect holiday fare? It's all a sham. Our lives are so not perfect yet every year we try to fool ourselves and each other into thinking that they are.
I loved this post on MommyTrak'd about living in a post-balance world and declaring 2009 the year of the un-balance. I'm all for that -- it's time we came out of the closet about our failures and frailties. I'll start. Hi, I'm Amy. And I'm completely unbalanced. See, it's easy. First step is admitting the problem. Second step is giving up the behavior. I know -- I could send my Christmas cards with a picture of the pee and poop piles that my dog and cat have been consistently leaving us around the house which would be a much more realistic depiction of our lives lately. And maybe I could show up to the cookie exchange with a bag of Oreos.
Maybe next year. Being a control freak with perfectionistic tendencies, it's that second step that'll trip me up.
Well at least I now have one thing off of my to-do list -- another blog post.
