Five Years Later*

Sweet mother of pearl.

I swear I don’t know where the last month went. The older I get (and the more kids I have) the faster time goes, and for the life of me I can’t get it to slow down. In the last few weeks our Weebean started school, Hank decided it was time to potty train, and our little prince is two months old.

I feel a bit like I’m starting to come up for air after Prince Will’s birth. I am someone who really struggles through the first six weeks after having a baby… I don’t handle the lack of sleep, no established routine or excessive hormones well. (Does anyone?!) My wonderful Hubster was home with me through all of it, and just went back to work last week. It’s taken me a few days, but I feel like I’m finding my rhythm as a mama of three. It’s far from a perfect picture, but it’s working. People are eating, I’m showering and the health department hasn’t declared my home a hazard zone. I feel like this is a great success. haha!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with the little free time I have while I’m home on maternity leave. I feel like the creative side of me is buzzing and I need to unleash it. I’m currently trying to learn a new hobby in preparation for Christmas (watch out siblings, I’m totally winning crafty Christmas this year), and more than anything I miss writing.

Today this post popped up in my TimeHop. Of the hundreds of posts I’ve written here over the last 10 years, it is probably the one I am most proud of. I mean, I’ve done some cool things over the years–writing for an online Shoe Magazine, working with Nine West and Johnson and Johnson–but this post is different for me. It is my passion on paper, and has more hits than any other post I have ever written. I am immensely proud that it even attracted the attention of CBC’s The National who wanted to interview me, but I declined because it would have meant losing my anonymity… something I depend on as a blogger / teacher.

But Timehop tells me I wrote it five years ago. Five years! Reading it now I can see how much has changed… but also how much is still the same. I no longer have to depend on daily supply calls, but I am still not a permanent teacher. And for the most part, I’m okay with that. I know I’ll find something eventually.

(At least by the time I retire. ha.)

There isn’t much I can do but wait as I slowly climb up the seniority ladder. But writing… I miss the voice that was poured into that post. THAT is what I need to find again. I used to have dreams of writing a novel, and once upon a time I used to write poetry. Poetry! I feel like I waste so much of the precious “free time” I have, and I need to be smarter about how I’m spending it. I know my life is vastly different now than it was five years ago, but I don’t want to keep using that as an excuse to waste my talents.

I don’t really know what the point of this whole rant was… is? I just feel my creative side has been asleep for so long and recently it just awoke with a vengeance. I feel like I’ve been saying how much I’ve missed writing without actually taking any action to fix it, and now I’m buzzing and I am bursting at the seams with ideas of things I need to do. And write about.