I reached a crux with this blog where I had to decide whether or not to renew my domain name and hosting package.  Ultimately the damned aut0-renew made the decision for me (my budget, it hurts!), but my commitment to writing, unfortunately, has not been on autorenew. I have read in several place that blogs are going the way of the dinosaur, that Twitter and Facebook have taken over as the new norm, and that nobody really wants to take the time to read a blog anymore. That makes me sad and somewhat alarmed.  We have become such a soundbite nation that I fear we have been overtaken with a collective attack of attention deficit.  I don’t think it serves us very well.  Looking at snapshots leads to snap decisions, which are rarely very good ones.  I don’t think that mindfulness should ever go out of fashion. I think that slowing down to collect my thoughts was a useful exercise for me, and I don’t think my one-year attack of ennui has done me any favors, either.

But I have lost my muse to a certain extent.  Depression is only partly to blame for that, but I think the other part is I was feeling increasingly slotted into the Mommyblogger pigeonhole.  In and of itself, this does not bother me, this categorization.  I did 25 reproductive years as not-a-mommy, so I find this curious, this sudden drop into the bottomless pit of mommy-identity.   The most eloquent writers I know writing in the medium (and I refuse to use blogosphere, it annoys me), are moms, writing about their kids and about being moms.  No, it bothers me only because I find my concerns and thoughts on motherhood and my son increasingly disconnected from those of my peers.

I do not worry about my son’s mental health, or developmental states.  When he has red days, I don’t really see it as anything more than a phase.  He’s going to the public school he’s districted to go into, and I don’t really worry if it will ultimately get him into Harvard.  Mostly, really, I simply celebrate him BEING.  I celebrate the entire little person, with his individual quirks, that are just a part of  his about-to-turn-five personality and are no sign of anything bigger.  I am simply grateful that I was able to make his acquaintance.

This is not to say I do not have fears for his future and well being.  I do.  There are times when I lay awake at night, and I wonder what the hell kind of world I am leaving him.  I worry about methane levels above the Artic Circle.  I worry about dead zones off the Gulf and Pacific Coast.  I worry about islands disappearing into the sea, and animals that will cease to exist.  I worry about our utter and complete dependence on fossil fuel.

In short, I worry about the things I can do so very little about.  But the things within my control?  Well.   I just trust myself to make the best decisions I can with the information I have.    It’s gotten me this far.

This realization, that my worries and my attitudes about parenting are so very diametrically opposed to those of my peers has stricken me rather speechless.  I just don’t know that I have anything people ultimately want to read,  or that speaks to them in any way at all.   I have no greater wisdom, no advice, and surprisingly little angst about parenthood.   We are all just making shit up as we go along in a giant experiment where there are no do-overs, and yet, we produce surprisingly few serial killers.

I am beginning to suspect that my standards may be a bit low.  At the end of the day, if we are all still alive and can laugh about it, my job is done.

I can live with that.