Chaos. Blogging. More Chaos.

Maybe it's the season. Maybe it's the school back in session and our bodies kind of naturally go into this whole, "Stop having fun it's time to actually work" mode. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me. But at least I'm not the only one. Nikki from Moms Who Drink and Swear went through it, and it's actually her blog post that's helping me get through it.

This is her post... http://www.chicagonow.com/moms-who-drink-and-swear/2013/08/blogging-is-monetizing-your-blog-worth-the-price-of-your-dignity/

Yes, I'm re-thinking why do I even blog? What's the point? Like should I even bother keeping this thing going at all?

Maybe I should first explain the frustration. I need to face the fact eventually. The blog part of what I do online, and the Facebook page, the bulk of my time online, is not actually work. It's not a job. There's no money it. I don't want there ever to be money in it. I don't want to write about Pampers diapers and Citizen Watches. I once had a job doing that. I enjoyed it as jobs go, but as writing goes, I didn't. This blog was suppose to free me from that.

And with 3 kids, 6 and under, where I don't get much time away from them, I often feel like this blog distracts me from them, and they distract me from this blog. Like I'm just a distracted hot mess all damn day, every day, until the vodka kicks in and things make sense, and I'm not an alcoholic enough to drink vodka daily, so my life makes sense about twice a month.

For instance, I am now talking about a broken butterfly light up thing with my 3 year old. We just spent 5 minutes of her telling me in 20 different ways this butterfly light up thing is broken, it's now the one that belongs to her sister, I should get her sister a new one, her sister didn't like this one because it's broken. And she loves me. Meanwhile I'm watching the clock like a hawk because it's almost time to wake kids up for school. I want to squeeze in as much of this now before the day gets me, but apparently, I won't be posting this before 8AM. Do you think I have any idea what the hell I was saying? Nope. Reread....

Nevermind, oh wait, I can re-read.

Nope. She needs stuff now, in her house she made me build at 6:30AM, with blankets and stepstools in my living room because the step stools belong in the middle of the living room.

Now she peed herself.

Oh yeah, I was blogging. Let me try to reread again what I was writing. Oh yeah, so my life is frustrating and I'm frequently distracted. You know that blog I wrote about Miley? I did that half asleep in the middle of the night, somewhat tipsy, and I stopped to get some juice and get a blanky and hit a play button and what not. When I finally read the blog I wrote for the first time where I'm in a mind frame to understand what i was reading, which was days after I posted, like hundreds of people read this blog that I wrote before I read it, it wasn't the point I was really trying to get across. Not really even that close to it. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I was outraged over something I do. I twerk. I shake my ass. I don't play with my lady junk with my mop sucking on the tip of it, ewww, but I do dance provocatively with my mop. I think I mostly felt bad for Miley because she just looked like a crack head. Her rhythm was a little off, not like she's white and can't find rhythm off, but more like she was on some drugs and wanted to move faster than the song was going. It made her look desperate or something, but anyway, did I write about that? Nope.

Update: The 3 year old finished getting stuff in her house.

So basically I'm saying I have no idea what the fuck I'm saying on this thing half the time. For real, there are Facebook statuses I don't remember making. I take a minute to start something, and before I can finish, the kids send me off to their Wonderland by the time I come back, I don't know which way is up or down. It makes me wordy because I forget all my original thoughts and points, so I come up with new ones. This happens so many times I end up with 17 different blog posts into one. I have no idea if it makes any sense. By the time you read the same paragraph 27 times in a row, it looks like it's in another language. Yeah, that works. Whatever. Post it. If I don't post it now, it will just sit in drafts like the hundreds of half written posts sitting there.

Update: I just helped her take off a camel back. It's her dads. I guess it's her Dora Backpack because camouflage is so much better than sparkly purple DORA one. This actually makes me proud my daughter chose camouflage over sparkles.

Now she's trying to take the whole thing apart. I'm sure I won't be smart enough to figure out how to put it back together. Shit it's getting close to waking kids up time...

So, instead of re-reading because I forget what I was saying... hold on again...

I am now wishing she chose sparkles over camouflage and why? The sparkle one has one compartment to open and shut with velcro and that's it. No 50 places that zip and snap. This isn't a back pack. This is a toddler activity center.

Ok, so oh yeah, I was going to just get to the original thing i was thinking about when I first started this post, and I forget what it was. Nevermind. I guess what I'm trying to say is this isn't easy for me to post shit. It's distracting. And why do I do it? Because I am amazed if I make enough sense for people to want to come back to read, and who am I doing this for?

See, like this a normal blogger internal battle. What's the point of blogging it if no one reads it? But do I really want to blog for you, the reader? Or am I blogging for myself?

I just took off her backpack.

Because if I blog for you, then I go crazy trying to figure out what you want, from the topic to the writing style, to the level of snark to the kind of humor... Since I have no idea what you want because most of you won't tell me if I ask, it's trial and error. And even then, there will always be 5 people in every thousand who make absolutely no motherfucking sense. Like the 2 page unlikes from the Good Morning facebook status. It's like, "Excuse the fuck out of me for trying to wish you a good morning." They didn't just hide the post. Nope they had to unlike the page AFTER hiding the post. According to Facebook. Then I lose my purpose being the fan bitch. I then become that blogger who has no sincerity, who is only writing to appeal to other people, who is focused on marketing and PR.... Just to get a fan base to appear popular to who? My own ego?

IF I write for myself, then it's like why bring you into it? I mean, some of this sucks. My brain is weird. Some of it you are like, "Awesome, she's so weird." and other times it's like, "Damn she sucks, she's so weird."

She is now asking me about a sewing thing. What is it? I don't know. DO I look like June Cleaver. It's a device from the sewing kit... Now she wants juice...

Whatever I was saying, I originally approached this post in two parts. One part, explain my issues. I didn't get to do that well. Some of the things I was thinking about with that, I totally forget. I'm sure I'll remember days after I post this. Maybe I'll update at the bottom if that happens. The second part, the main point I have yet to get to, the one I almost totally forgot about making, I wanted to sit here and remind myself why I started to blog in the first place. I don't really remember what I was thinking. I know there were a lot of variables. What were they? What would I want from this now?

And now I have to wake kids up for school...

The experience was common. The multi-tasking doesn't stop with the blog. That's how I also don't find a hair brush, you know spending over a half hour looking for a hair brush which includes wiping 2 butts, plunging a toilet, finding a teddy bear, and stuff to not find a brush at all and send the kids to school with bedhead so we can be on time thinking to myself, "You know, if you didn't blog, you could have been looking for that hair brush instead, wait, like I knew to look for a hair brush before I needed a hair brush knowing exactly where two hair brushes are located, I wonder if the kids are hiding these brushes on purpose?"

The trip in the car consisted of conversations I don't remember, and then I had a kid scared to go (Kindergarten), then a man with reconstructed legs walked by

and the 3 year old needed help with a buckle to a toddler chair she's way too old for.

So as I was saying... well, I forget what I was going to say, so the trip home was a quiet time of reflection where I thought about how math and love are two universal languages and how they are so different and are there any more universal languages? And maybe my problem is I don't know how to keep it real anymore. No wait, the problem is as I've grown up, I've realized Schrodinger's cat is true in a metaphorical way to everything about life. Real quick, for the popular people who have yet to venture this far into nerdom, Schrodinger's cat is a popular example about how quantum mechanics works. Basically, this guy stuck a hypothetical cat (not a real one, no animals were injured in this THOUGHT experiment), in a box with some sort of device contrived to where if the cat hits a button, poison emits and kills the cat. You close the box. Seal it. Wait a bit. Is the cat alive or dead? Did it die of poison? Or is it chilling fully healthy and hungry. Did it die of some other cause? You don't really know looking at the box, but in quantum mechanics, all the possibilities are what's happening at once. That cat is alive and dead.

she needs out now. She also had wax fangs in her mouth, haha funny, and she removed them to tell me she wants bigger teeth. Then...

Wait, she's asking about her feet on her house.

OK, she went into a long story about her teeth will get loose, fall out, her daddy will lose her teeth, and she will need gold teeth that I must buy for her.

So, wait... She loves me. OK, so hold on. She's not done yet. Yes she is...

So, what was I saying? Schrodinger's cat. Why was I talking about his cat? Oh, yeah. So all the possibilities are happening at the same time until you find out otherwise. So I started thinking about life like this, without meaning to, like without making the association to some pussy until this morning in the car ride home which lasted all of 5 minutes.

Something is broken and has no light. Do not make me hook up those headphones to the xbox child?

Basically, like is Zimmerman guilty? No. But before we knew the court's decision on that no, he was both guilty and not guilty and neither guilty nor not guilty at the same time. If you think about it, in many ways he is guilty. In many ways, he is not. In many ways he should be guilty even though nothing illegal actually occurred. In many ways he is still a threat even though he isn't that threatening... Another example. Does my husband love me? He does. and he doesn't. He also hates me. All at once. It's pretty easy to have a series of contrasting emotions toward everyone. Life is a gray area, not because it's black and white, but because it's black and white.

Then I got home and made the kid ice cream, for breakfast, of which she had one small bite of. Because she's allergic to milk and soy, I was excited to give her ice cream for breakfast because for the first time in over a year, my Walmart started selling Coconut Milk based ice cream again. After licking the scoop clean, I have decided that shit would be the bomb with some rum and chocolate sauce. Like that's my next mudslide. I might post it some day as a recipe, Pitorro Mudslide.

Wait I must watch this. She is super fast and jumpy and tripped over, she's okay, yes I'm watching my dear. Awesome. You're welcome. Please just watch Dora. Ok, I'll give you a hug. Watch Dora.

Awww. Yes Daddy is not here. He's at work. I love you too.

This is why I don't have sex anymore...

She didn't make a bubble. It didn't pop. It didn't go in her mouth. Thank you child for telling me this 3 times in a row.

OK, what was this blog about? Why do I blog or why did I start one or why would I continue? Something like that. Let's just start putting out numbers before I forget again...

1. My facebook statuses were getting entirely too long.

2. Everyone has been telling me I should blog for years now. The first group of people were in a Catholic Forum as their nice way of telling me my posts are too long, put it on a blog and keep it out of their forum. At least they were kind about it. Because there's kind insults and not-so-kind insults ... Well we'll pretend they just thought I was so smart and thoughtful that I should blog like the people on my Facebook who kept saying I'm so funny I should blog. I'm only funny on MY Facebook apparently.

3. I really needed something that was mine. Something that gave me ME TIME. To reflect and think about shit.

4. I quit that one job where I was getting paid to write, and it burned me out. This is a great way to get me writing again. Best thing, I can fuck up my grammar, mispell words (notice I misspelled mispell?),

her teeth is starting to fall. She has to say this 3 times. She needs a blanky. It's lost. NOW I find a hair brush. Eye roll please!  While I'm up, after a cup of coffee and 2 energy drinks, I guess now is a great time to break the seal right?

And some other third thing... Oh yeah, I can say the fuck word on this blog.

5. It is very therapeutic to vent about stuff. It's also very therapeutic to reflect on life and remind myself to grow up once in a while. Like I can start writing out a huge rant about how motherhood sucks, and before I'm finished, I remembered how much I love my kids and how much it's all really worth it. If I didn't take the time to bitch about it, I could easily get stuck in a rut of pissed offness. It's really hard to hide impatience from the children.

6. It would be cool to write some articles about things I read about with parenting, but not as boring, something more entertaining. Like my recipes. Like take a boring subject and make it interesting. That was really easier said than done in retrospect.

7. I should probably write about autism. I'm having a lot of success with my kid and nephew on the spectrum. A lot of these mom bloggers who have a kid on the spectrum and are not on the spectrum themselves seem horribly lost. Some of the things they say down right piss me off. I won't comment on their blog about it because it's their blog, and while they may be wrong about autism, I still like them as human beings, and what would I accomplish to question their thoughts invalidating their feelings? I'd make them more lost, which doesn't help their children at all. In fact, if I'm too rude in an autistic like manner, they might resent autism all together including their child's. A lot of them already do resent autism. Maybe it's time i share my opinion from an informative light on my own blog right?


I think that covers some of the basic reasons as to why I started blogging outside "well everyone else is doing it why not?" and "oh look, some of these women are finding a new career from it. Maybe I won't be making any book deals, but this thing could take me somewhere I didn't expect to go, some place I can call a career when the kids are in school and I'm ready to work again seeing how I'm pretty sure McDonalds won't even hire me after 10 years of not working."

What do I want from this blog? Moms Who Drink and Swear said this in her post on this subject... "It was always about the connection, the community." That's my issue. I feel disconnected.

Nikki (Moms who Drink and Swear) goes on...

"Most bloggers I knew were struggling to find the balance between nurturing their community and generating quality content with the need to please the almighty gods of page views, advertisers and sponsors by sacrificing the soul of their blog.

It didn’t used to be this way, and in my experience, this kind of thing causes a rift within the various blogging communities, tapping into the greatest fear of a writer – the fear that our words won’t connect us with others, that nobody will care about what we write, that we will be harshly judged, that we simply aren’t good enough."

That's it. What do you do when you say Fuck SEO. Fuck money. Fuck product reviews. Fuck branding yourself? What if you write to connect with people and you find you are still not connecting? That your real words don't connect you with others? That your sincerity isn't good enough?

That's where I am at. I don't think I'm connecting because I'm

she just fell. Yeah, it's time to trash the high chair. I was going to give that away but apparently a kid cut the strap for the legs so now it's trash. She's ok. She didn't want out for a hug or anything. She demanded I put it (with her in it) in a specific place, and then I handed her the blanky and teddy for her to throw it back onto the floor to cry, "You didn't hand me my stuff." So I could pick it all up again and hand it to her because I can't totally pin-point her crazy but it's like a mixture of sociopath and autism. Like she wants to control me to get her her things, but also her brain is stuck on a specific process that if you screw it up at all, you have to start over.

That's why. I don't feel like I'm connecting because I'm distracted. I just don't make sense to anyone including myself. I am a Van Gogh painting of an MC Escher drawing sitting in the middle of a realism exhibit.

Now the phone rings...

I think at this point, I'm just going to blog when I feel like it, and I'm going to post half written blogs that have no end, like wherever I stop is where I stop. While a part of me is saying, "Just stop blogging. Just focus on the kids and this house," I know I will get lost in the kids and house. I need a me-something in my life. One I can do while watching the kids. And it goes against the mantra I'm trying to accept and follow.

Embrace the chaos.

There's my name again. Mommy. The three year old. Yes baby, I love you too.

If this disconnects me from you guys, sorry. I'm just not connected. My dots are floating around and they are not in numerical order. There is no connecting them. If this is one of the biggest fears a writer must face, why the hell not. I have been forced to face every one of my biggest fears in the last couple years, and you know what? I'm not afraid anymore. Embrace the chaos also means, love that which you fear. All of the best things in life are scary at first. Motherhood for instance.

If you have no idea what the fuck I just said, and you read this to here thinking, "Wow I so just wasted my time." Don't walk away empty handed. If you get anything from this, it's that you should too try to embrace the chaos because if you keep putting things in alphabetical order so everyone can mess it all up, you're going to lose your mind.

And the three year old needs help. Nevermind. She did it herself.



P.S. I'm posting this blog post. I will read it some other day to see if it makes sense.