Same but different

I've been writing a lot of blogs lately. I suppose they're like buses - thoughts, ideas and opportunities to write come along at differing frequencies. Last week, my husband was away with work. It left me with time to think and write in the evenings - I've also been encouraged to do this because of there being very little else to do (TV is a load of rubbish mostly and housework is only a partial priority, unless there is a mouse-on-the-carpet emergency or something). 

As the blogs stack up, they are turning into a rather long list of opinions on various aspects of parenting. This makes me uncomfortable as, although I'm really enjoying writing down and sharing my experiences, I also don't want to offend anybody or cause any upset by my views: as KT said, and it has stuck, "There is enough guilt attached to motherhood already!" However, what is the point in caring deeply about your subject matter if you are going to then water it down and make something that isn't really saying anything, or representative of you in the first place? It is a balance which I am trying to figure out.

After all, what's the point of this blog anyway? Is anyone reading it? Does it matter? Am I just egotistical? Or could all bloggers be called that? 

For me, writing began as a way of expressing and working out the conundrum going on in my head when I first decided to leave my job. Having to write in public, rather than in a diary (even if nobody actually reads it), forces you to think your thoughts through clearly and try to balance them out. Rather than ranting in private (where you might run the risk of not actually representing yourself because hot air gets in the way), drafting, redrafting and summing up has been a really interesting and useful process. Mostly because of how wobbly I have felt about my decisions with regards to balancing family life and career life. In a purely practical sense, I also am just very excitable when it comes to finding out new, better ways to do things and hope that I can provide useful advice for other people who might find it useful too (unless they've already had their own eureka moment about some product or approach). It is also something I enjoy now I'm not writing in a professional sense, so I'm doing it for fun.

Same smile

I know that everybody is different. We all come from different places, we all have differing experiences and aspirations. We each respond differently to life. Although I seem to have found a more peaceful way of life now since deciding to temporarily step out of the career I was following, it doesn't mean that I think that my route is golden. Whereas I couldn't quite get the balance right for my first post, many others do. Whereas I have found much more stability and meaning to my life since becoming a parent, it doesn't mean I think everybody wants to or should have children, or that there's anything wrong in that. The combinations of different ways of doing things are endless so I won't keep comparing, but hopefully you understand where I'm coming from. We all find peace and happiness in our lives in our own ways. So no matter how strongly I may put my case from one blog to another, it doesn't mean I expect agreement.

(And the phrase Same Smile is taken from a very nice CBeebies programme, discovering that we are all the same but different).