It's coming up on the first anniversary of my no-longer-new job, which means we are just past the anniversary of my blog unpleasantness, wherein I inadvertently torpedoed my chances for an overpaid space at the federal government food trough.
It's funny, how much has changed since then. The Blogger family has cut all daily ties to the organization that provided our livelihood for more than a decade. The Young Prince had his worst and best year of school ever. I think we've come a long way, and learned a great deal.
It's also funny how much of an effect that experience had on me. And I suppose there are others who would say I haven't learned a blasted thing. See, I have spent the past year wondering if maybe That Horrible Woman who didn't hire me was right, that my blogging was too cavalier, too revealing, altogether TMI. There have been countless times where I paused and thought, "I should write a blog post. Orrrrr, I could go throw up." And then I would busy myself with something else.
The weird part is, I never thought that what I was writing was all that inappropriate. I've always thought I subscribed to the Davy Crockett philosophy: Be sure you're right, then go ahead. So it was alarming to me how very uncertain I suddenly was that I had been right. I suppose it's to be expected -- when someone slaps you in the face and calls you a whore, you're bound to be pulled up short, even if you're a church-going virgin. What? Where did that come from? Why on earth did they say that?
This is especially true when you are confronted with such assertions just as your entire world is changing. I had a new job, and having just been slapped in the face by one workplace, I wasn't particularly anxious to inadvertently stick my face in the path of my new boss' oncoming open palm by blogging about some other thing I didn't realize was entirely off limits. So I second-guessed myself, I spent hours debating. I agonized.
I've spent a year doing that. And I've concluded That Horrible Woman's lecture was one part valid, two parts nonsense, and one part purely insulting.
Perhaps I'm simply rationalizing, because the truth is, I've missed blogging. I couldn't stay away entirely -- I still used this space to sort out my thoughts about big events, to chronicle some family occasions. But I didn't do as much as I wanted to.
So I've made a resolution to myself that I'm going to start this up again. Every week I will make time for it, and I will write whatever strikes me. I want to have a space where my family can read about what's going on. I want a space to say nice things, to work things out, to serve as an archive so that the YP can go back in several years and gain insight or reminders to things he doesn't understand now or is likely to forget. And if that means I can't get a job at the CIA or that it lands me squarely in the category of "untrustworthy and indiscreet" as That Horrible Woman said, well, fine. That's the way it crumbles, cookiewise.
I will start with this. I am bursting with pride about my family. My dad's book hits stores soon. My husband is plowing through an effort that promises to join the ranks of extremely readable and interesting historical nonfiction. I'm in the last phase of a drastic reworking of one kid's novel, halfway through my first draft of a "new adult" novel, and thinking hard about reworking a project the hubs and I abandoned years ago.
The YP did this last weekend. And he wraps up fourth grade this week. And he's trucking off to sleepaway camp next weekend. And his head comes up to my collarbone. I don't know when all that happened.
