Cheryl Katz

The day I un-killed my blog.

Here is a list of things I haven’t been doing:

Photography
Spinning
Knitting
Reading
Active gardening (have weeded and/or harvested, and plan to put tomatoes down soon)
Changing the world
Valuing my own time, efforts and accomplishments
Blogging (or writing at all)

I’m sure there are plenty of other things I also haven’t been doing, but these are ones I might be reasonably expected to do.  I have, on the other hand, spent a lot of time thinking about all of the areas in which I perceive that I lack, and build boxes of “important stuff” into which I somehow miraculously never fall.

I also killed my blog for the span of about twenty-four hours.  Why?  I have an easy, truthful answer for that, actually.  I like to blog when I’ve done things.  I don’t like to talk so much about the times when I’m floundering and uncertain, and much much less when I’m mentally eating myself alive.  At least not until I feel I’m able to explain it away with a neat conclusion.

My life isn’t really like that.  That’s why it’s been getting harder and harder for me to blog.  I do struggle to accept my abilities and get over my weaknesses.  And when I get into a funk, I do withdraw a bit from doing the things I generally like and feel fulfilled doing (see list above) which removes me further from a) blogging and b) feeling worthwhile.

Here’s something I have been doing a lot of: being a mom.  I spent a whole week and a half at home, full time, with Sami.  I felt at the same time monstrously satisfied and completely inadequate to the task.  By the end of the week I’d realized that the times I felt frustrated, overwhelmed and inadequate were not a wholesale reflection on my actual parenting abilities, but on the age and general tenacity of my child.  That I was able to turn it over and get to that point is, in a word, unusual.

I shouldn’t be excessively hard on myself (not that this stops me.)  I forget sometimes how deeply I still feel the loss of Alex.  I’ll be Jewish in a month and counting, and while most days I feel prepared, inside this is a lot of change and there are still many un-addressed questions; and worse, questions I have answered in my mind whose answers are unsettling when I think about them too hard and too long.  Passover was hard.  Ben’s been traveling a lot.  Life, it seems, gets harder all the time when you’re an adult and you have to face it.

I feel sometimes that I went directly from being a child to being a parent, bypassing some integral non-parent adult phase.  But there I go being all negative on myself.

The only cure for my self-criticism for things I’m not doing… is to start doing them again.  I got back to “normal” weeks ago, post-Alex, but I need to get back to real normal.  Whatever that is.

So I’ll post on, except when I don’t.  (How’s that for a noncommittal, completely attainable promise?)

Baby steps, my friends.

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