New Chapter on the Harry Potter Fanfiction

The weather has been gorgeous lately. We've had sun and temperatures in the seventies with light to moderate breezes. Naturally, I've been spending my time outside with the kids, and not writing on anything.

I did, however, sign up for a course on writing children's books. We'll see how that goes. More on that later.

I also updated my Harry Potter fanfiction, "Song of the Hat". You can find it here:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8662596/10/The-Song-of-the-Hat

Going to bed now. I'll say more another day.

Reconfiguration

I am going to take a few days for contemplation, and then I am probably going to change the title of my blog. I am probably not going to change it's current purpose.

The current title is The Determined Homemaker, which very deeply fit my purpose when I wrote it. At the time, I had just quit my full-time job, which I had taken on very reluctantly when my husband was laid off. With hidden tears and stress levels high, I left my one-year-old son and set out to keep food on the table as a software engineer at a local defense contractor. Depending on the way I look at it, this was either a complete failure or a success.

I managed to hold out for three years while my husband fast-tracked full-time to his bachelor's degree, giving him the standing needed to make the needed salary for me to return home. On the other hand, I got very sick with several neural and intestinal problems, and it took me a good year or so to really regain my health again, and on top of that I kept getting poor performance reviews. When I'm working as a programmer, I'm a very good coder. I am not a data-entry whiz (numbers dyslexia). I'm not a manager. I can teach and tutor readily, but I have to be given a class and subject. I can't just go walking about and Know.. or Find Out.. what people need to know. In short, I was, as I often am, a square peg in a world full of round holes. If they'd expected me to build an application, they might've thought I was a genius. They wanted me to psuedo-manage data entry personnel, and I was a complete flop.

I'm still dealing with the self-esteem fallout from that fiasco.

I suppose I've spent the last year trying to prove that I'm a good enough homemaker to justify being a pretty bad Extrovert Psuedo-Manager Career Woman. The time for that is over. I don't know how I'm going to move past it, but I know I need to. Of course I'm going to keep being a full-time homemaker. But I need to stop stressing over my societal/financial worth. I've been trying to pare down my hobbies to nothing that is not highly-potentially financially profitable, so that I end up doing nothing but either homemaking or doing something that will or might land me a check, however small. That can't be my life anymore.

All these books and essays and such about finding your purpose in life seem to assume that you are supposed to pick and focus in on one single thing only that lights up your eyes, that you are drawn to naturally. What if there's more than one thing? Is it truly a waste to do something you enjoy but will never be good at? I've got some questions to answer in the coming days. It may be that my year, rather than being what I've got when I answer them, will simply be about finding the answers.

Meanwhile, I anticipate that I will continue to write religious and political essays in this blog, peppered with things I've discovered or done as a homemaker/homeschooling mom. And in time, we'll see how this blog changes as I do.

Thanks for reading!

Down time

Homemaking, especially mothering, is not like the typical workweek. There is never a typical homemaking week. Even the best schedules don't always work unless they are flexible. Homemakers will end up with Crazy Weeks and Downtime. This week appears so far to be Downtime.

Starting on Tuesday, Little Bernie and I came down with a bad cold together. For the past few days we've been staying mostly at home, resting frequently. The kitchen has remained clean, the laundry is pretty well caught up, but beyond that not much has been happening on the cleaning-and-repairing front.

Sometimes you just have to sit out for a bit. Sometimes downtime just happens. You can still make the most of it. I've done some paperwork, some organization at the desk. But some of it has just plain been quiet bonding time. Lil Bernie and I watch Disney movies together and discuss them. I take a moment to sit in the living room and enjoy the work I've been doing. Our pantry is still plentiful thanks to last week's preparations.

So next time you find yourself stuck in downtime, don't get into a guilt trip about it. Just relax, do some stuff you usually don't take the time for, and accept that this is the other side of the Crazy Week.

Just try to not let the dishes-washing slip...