It’s official. I’m a blog tease. I start up blogs, nab a few readers and then I lose interest. My mother gives me her rueful look and tells me in a pained voice that I should stick to things. How will I ever write the next Booker novel if I can’t maintain a lousy blog? (It’s besides the point that I have never planned to write a novel.. this is just blahblah to her.)
I have spent the past year at home on maternity leave. One WHOLE year because I live in the social democrat paradise for mothers that is Norway. There has not been a single day when I have not been musing and jotting and constructing “posts” – in my head. There has also not been a single day when I haven’t promised myself that I would record all this for posterity. For the kids and for myself. To feed my obsessive need to make some sense of the world and people around me. And every single day, I caved in to the black hole of fatigue. No, lets call it what it really is – soul-numbing tiredness. Nothing had prepared me/us for the “administrative” powers required to nurture two children, endure sleepless nights, deal with the unending drama in the life of a five year old, nurture our relationship, run a home, maintain a social life and did I mention neverending laundry? One year down the line, the dust has begun to settle. We are almost not overwhelmed anymore. Our default setting is now “Bliss in Organized Chaos”. Its not a bad place to be and it has robbed me of my sterling excuses.
I have finally accepted that in order to be minimally sane – and my ambitions here are modest indeed! – I need to write.The maximally sane Viking has played no small part in this process.
Me: Babe, “(Insert sentence about existential angst set to the backdrop of a whine)
The Viking: (not looking up from the paper) You should write. Why don’t you write?
Me: (Insert sentence re: the impossibility of time management with two kids, add a few more dollops of angst and barely suppressed rage. Set to symphony in Moan major)
The Viking: (wondering if poking out his eye with ballpoint pen can put him out of his misery) Please write. You NEED to write. I NEED you to write.
Oh well. Let the games begin.
On a Wing and a Prayer 