Well, hello there.

As my husband and I drove home from our New Year's Eve dinner, I decided we should recap our 2011. We both thought hard but came up with little; we dredged up a few brights spots, like Little E's new school, then some lowlights that I'd managed to forget and a vacation that will likely be my anti-prototype when planning any future trips. And then my husband helpfully offered, "Well, you wrote a blog, and then you stopped."

For the rush of shame I felt, he may as well have said, "Well, you backed over the neighbors' cat and then you buried it in the yard under the cover of darkness."

At first I thought my embarrassment came from having spent a year pretending that my sage insights about life were important enough to share with the world. And certainly that was part of it. But not the biggest part of it, I realized.

What felt the most shameful was that I'd stopped.

I started writing here when I went from working full-time to working part-time; it seemed like a productive use of my extra time. I made a promise to myself that I would maintain this blog for a year, and for the most part, it was a good use of my extra time. I got to play with words, I got to process through weird feelings that I might have otherwise shoved awkwardly aside, and I even got to cash a couple of (meager) paychecks for my writing.

After a while, though, it started to feel like an obligation --a pretty fruitless one. Also, I started to question the wisdom of sharing my life and, particularly, my children with faceless strangers. (This particular concern sprang from the frequency with which members of my "audience" landed here while searching for a bodily fluid associated primarily with the bedroom; this creepy misdirection is apparently how Google punishes gratuitous use of Latin.) Mostly, though, I started to cringe at how incredibly lame it was for me to be offering myself up as some latterday Erma Bombeck-cum-Martha Stewart (Drat! I've gone and done it again.)

So, I convinced myself that having fulfilled my original mission I would stop completely and move on to new challenges and creative outlets. I took longer runs. I threw myself into creating new curriculum at work. I decided to make my own accessories, yielding a strange necklace crafted from an old t-shirt and copious amounts of hot glue. Still, I found myself wondering if my food wouldn't taste just a little better if I painstakingly arranged and photographed it before I dug in. I mentally composed posts expounding on jogging as a metaphor for life and offering snarky advice to New Year's resolution gym-joiners. (Clearly, I've been sitting on some ground breaking stuff.)

Recently it occurred to me that as I am my own boss in this venture, I could really make my own hours. It's not as if anyone will likely notice whether I update twice a week. (Except for you, perverse googler of bodily fluids. You've been checking in faithfully, and for that I owe you a grudging respect and some clarification: This is really not the site you're looking for.) As for being lame, as both a mother and a high school teacher I am reminded of my capacity for lameness several times a day; writing an occasional blog post probably won't make me any uncool-er than I already am.

So I'm hoping that next New Year's Eve our year-end recap will require fewer searching pauses and be full of thrilling successes, familial bliss, and, most importantly, a vacation devoid of fist-pounding frustration or icily silent stretches of highway.

Also, I hope that my husband will be able to say, "You started writing that blog again . . .sort of."

Dream: The writing life

Last month we went to our first parent-teacher conference of the year for Big E.  Her teacher raved about her writing --the plot development, the creativity, the voice. I nodded, smiling politely, then asked what kind of math practice we should be doing with her.

Please know, I'm truly proud of her writing.  I found the pirate adventure story that her teacher showed us riveting, and I don't think I'm overstating when I call her "Pinky Lou Pickens" series, penned in bed at night, a genius combination of  "Amelia Bedelia" and Junie B. Jones.  But she told me that math is her favorite and far be it from me to fail to support her interests --especially in what I imagine to be a potentially lucrative field.

And there's also this: I was once a little girl who wrote stories, whose teachers praised her mightily.  I'm not too humble to tell you that when I was around Big E's age I won my family a Carvel ice cream cake and half-a-dozen flying saucers when my story about a very special elf placed second in the local paper's Christmas writing contest.  In junior high I was honored for my submissions in gradewide essay contests in both seventh and eighth grade (about my undying love of The Constitution and a quick and simple solution to homelessness, respectively).  In high school, my otherwise thoroughly unimpressed senior year English teacher was so pleased with my college essay that she kept a copy to share with future classes.  All of this, plus praise from college and graduate school professors, and yet my resume is curiously light on professional writing experience.   

Yesterday, I had a post about my secret stint in fast food syndictated on Blogher.com.  It will pay just about what I used to take home for a weekend at McDonald's and was such a major coup in my non-existent writing career that my husband brought home flowers.  Prior to that, the closest I'd come to being a published author was writing ancillary materials for a textbook company. And while I am heartened to imagine the great service I've done the overworked, underprepared English teacher who will rely on my animated Powerpoint plot summary of Romeo and Juliet to kill some class time, it doesn't meaure up to the literary greatness that I think my elementary school teachers would have predicted.

There are a lot of really good writers in this world.  At least once a day I read something --a thoughtful magazine article, a moving essay by one of my students, a witty blog post-- that sets me in awe of another's talents.  This proliferation of gifted wordsmiths, along with the fact that literary success is not always tied to abilities --anyone pick up Snooki's latest chef d'oeuvre?--  makes me hope, proud as I am to hear her teacher gush, that Big E can find fulfillment in an area that promises a clearer path.

Growing up, I was always horrified by parents who hoped to dictate the course of their children's career path, especially if they were so hypocritical as to put their own job choice off-limits.  I swore I would never be that kind of mother, and so I won't.  But it is easy to see the question of what my girls should be when they grow up through the eyes of, well, a grown-up and to allow pragmatism to get in the way of supportive parenting. Following your dreams may be rewarding but so is staying out of debt and accruing a healthy savings (I would imagine).  Despite that, I know that a big part of my job is to nurture my children's talents and support them in whatever it is they choose to accomplish, and if either of them should choose the writing life, I'll be there to sharpen their pencils, proofread their manuscripts, and bring a fresh box of Sharpies to their signings.

Still, as long as she's liking math, maybe I should pick up an abacus or something to show my support, because I'd be just as happy changing calculator batteries and polishing Fields Medals.