Or something like that. Maybe I can make my own movie and change the tagline to “30, Thirsty, and Stretch-Marked.” That might be a tad more in tune to my life.
So yeah, I turned 30. And it feels freaking weird. I’m not someone who freaks out about aging, like my youth is the source of my eternal power, probably because I’ve always felt like an old soul anyways, but I have to admit that 30 feels momentous. Partly because I built this blog and my book precisely with a ticking time clock over my head looming, racing to get it all out there before I turned 30 and was no longer a “young mom,” and partly because that age literally marks the end of an era.
I’ve been panicking a little bit since I turned 30, wondering if I have made a mistake in putting my book out there in the world. My daughter is now eight and a voracious reader like her mother and I’m starting to wonder if I did the right thing. Will she hate me someday if she reads my book? Will she wonder if she ruined my life? Will she need therapy because there is a book out there detailing the horrifying details of how her parents had sex and made her?
Insert cringe face emoji here.
I feel like I’m having some kind of mid-life crisis (again) that hopefully isn’t really my mid-life, but then again, you never know, I suppose. I’m questioning everything I’ve ever done or known, really, and it’s not pleasant. I’m grappling with big questions like what I believe about God and if I’m doing the best job I really can as a parent and as a wife. (Spoiler alert: nope.)
In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m slamming on the brakes after feeling like I’ve been recklessly sprinting through my 20’s, taking on any writing job I could and throwing my literal soul out to the wolves of the world in exchange for the prestige of calling myself a “real” writer and bringing home a paycheck to boot. I don’t want to belittle myself or put myself down too much for the mistakes I have made in writing about my family and topics that, looking back, I am not proud of, because I have been able to do a lot for my family as a result of my writing. I paid off all our debt, which was a huge, huge blessing, and I’ve saved a significant amount for us to make our next move, either buying or building a dream home.
But still. That all came with a vey real price and I’ve come to a screeching halt in this space and online. I’m tired of the Internet in a lot of ways. I am a failed “mommy blogger” because I hate the fact that it means living my life online. I don’t want to update 50,000 social media accounts everyday. I don’t want to take pictures of everything. I suck at photography and photoshopping and filtering. I get a headache at the end of the day if I check my phone too much. I feel like I’ve constantly been worrying about doing the “right” things as an online professional, installing the plug-ins and the pop-up subscription boxes and the newsletters and the latest apps, but I just can’t seem to work up the motivation to care anymore. I’m behind the times, I suppose, but I’m honestly more happy to be able to just write about horse fly bites (did it yesterday) and interview fascinating people without placing my own personal life on a platter to be picked apart my online trolls anymore.
Keeping myself separated a bit more feels nice, you know?
I don’t want to give up writing, ever, and I feel grateful every day that I don’t have to leave my kids to clock in for another night shift where I may or may not possibly kill someone, but I also realize that in my quest to race the clock to become a “real” writer, I also lost out on a lot of “real” life.
And I want to remedy that now. Before it’s too late.
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