Happy Birthday to me!

It’s my birthday! If you’ve been following my Twitter feeds, you might know that I’ve been having a hard time lately, so today is a great day to turn things around and turn my eye toward a new horizon. So far, I’m feeling better, and although there’s much foundation to lay, I think I’ve sorted out some of the answers to the heavy questions that have been troubling me lately.

The Big Questions

Essentially, I have been caught up questioning my goals for this blog, and my larger goals in terms of work. With Baby Del at six months, I’ve been asking myself more and more if it’s time to try to move more actively toward part-time work-at-home activity. At the same time, my goal for years has been to align my livelihood with my values, so deeper questions must be addressed every time I take up the issue of work.

The whole thing has left me in a tizzy. Of course, I’m grateful to have this as the worst of my problems. Having the luxury, however temporarily, of debating what type of work I’d like to do and when I’d like to take it up (post-baby) is something that so many mothers do not have. Although I do make some sacrifices for this luxury, my good fortune and my debt to others does not go overlooked.

Yet this good fortune also gives me a great responsibility to take the question up seriously. Given my philosophies toward attachment parenting and homeschooling, should I even be considering part-time work if I can possibly dedicate this time to my children? Given my goals of embracing voluntary simplicity and reducing attachments, how can I make a living in a consumer-driven society in a way that does not promote excess? Although my blog is a great way to be a voice for simple living and natural parenting, do I really have the time to spare for it, or does it reduce my ability to effectively parent and be there for my family? And finally, given our difficult financial situation at the moment, is it time to relax my emphasis on values and simply try to make some cash in the most straightforward way possible?

These are the inner workings of the Mama Hope noggin. Call it my Libra moon, call it my “NF” personality type, or just say I think too much for my own good, but every move I make tends to be accompanied by a great deal of deliberating, reading, and excruciatingly long conversations that my husband and my mother thankfully abide.

Have I answered these questions?

Yes and no (of course).

One thing that I have answered definitively is that our financial situation is not yet in such dire straits that I need to fill my time with too many things just yet. As my husband put it, “Del’s not going to be a baby for too much longer. Don’t get so caught up that you can’t enjoy him.” Plus we’re getting ready to start a new year homeschooling with Stae and there’s much to be done! I’ve made the mistake in the past of balancing parenting, work, and values with my three arms that I don’t have, and ended up so much the worse in the health department.

But I’ve also made the recognition that things grow with time, like ideas or memes. My little business ideas blossom like Fibonacci spirals shooting out of my head, riding with rhythm of my words, bouncing off of the walls of our space and reverberating through the net as I type, come back to me, grow. In a way by putting off launching a new business I am giving them time to grow and mature, to ensure that they fit, give them iterations that will clarify their tone. When I do make a move, my hope is that this time it will be a solid one, it will be a keeper. In the meantime, I am gathering knowledge, connections with the world, and an assurance that this is who I am.

So, in answer to one question: no business launch for now or the foreseeable future. Even as I type this a second channel opens up in my mind’s dialogue, greedily coveting the extra time that will be freed up just to read and digest! Oh, reading, reading from real paper books with the baby on the lap or lying nearby and the blue sky above us! You are one of my joys and I’ve been neglecting you lately in favor of the flits of frenzied page-flipping for quick answers. Being a parent, I’ll probably not for awhile digest a non-fiction tome from cover to cover, but just to be able to read for readings sake will be a welcome old friend.

Which brings me to the blog. It has been pointed out to me both that my posts tend to be very thorough and time-consuming. I have also been asked, will I try to turn this into a for-profit blog? Those pesky ethics strike again, and make this another difficult question. How much of an oxymoron is a profitable blog on voluntary simplicity? I think I shall not be getting rich too quick. (If you’re not familiar with the practice of making money blogging, try these links.)

It seems that for now, my primary goal should be letting my blog be the voice of my daily quest to bring my life in line with my values: natural parenting, voluntary simplicity, and green living. Cluttering it up with an emphasis on profit simply dilutes my ability to be where I am now with my goals. I’ll likely throw in a bit of advertising where it seems relevant, but it looks like my primary goal will be to continue zeroing in on a mission for the blog that aligns with my daily adventures, while also keeping in mind that my time with my kids is now, and no blog post can come before that.

Birthday Gratitude

As I ponder all these questions, I must take a moment, of course, for gratitude. Gratitude on my birthday. Of course I’m grateful for so many things, my family and my extended family of relatives and friends being primary; you know who you are, and thank you for your support in keeping me strong!

What also deserves a tip of the hat are the creative inspirations in my life that have helped build who I am in the past and continue to direct my attention. Having watched Be Kind Rewind last night, with Jack Black, Mos Def and Danny Glover, closest in my thoughts are all the folks from the Doomefishe Theater Company, now Dome Theater, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. How absolutely sublime were those homemade productions in basements and warehouses! How sad am I to be miles away from that family! But your work and your creative genius (do you have ringing in your ears all my far away friends?) stays with me and helped shift my reality from an appreciation of the grand to a love affair with the small and homespun. Thank you for those years!

Also in my thoughts are my new encounters with virtual communities of mamas. Posts like This Community, This Family from To Think is to Create, and MomGrind’s post on online friendships inspire me to continue exploring the online community. And finally, so inspiring have been those of you who have taken the time to comment here and get to know me through Twitter. Thank you Angela and Laura, for your continual positive energy and contagious enthusiasm. Thank you Todd Tyrtle for your thought-provoking questioning. Thank you Kari, for your conscientiousness in asking and answering. Thanks to all of my new real life friends through our Meetup attachment parenting group, for your knowledge, your comments here, and your camaraderie. And thanks to those of you I haven’t mentioned, but I am so glad to be getting to know!

Birthday Wishes

So there’s my birthday gratitude, here are my birthday wishes:

Please let me know what you’ve enjoyed about the blog and what you’d like to see more of.

Keep commenting as your comments really do bring me community and spur my efforts (thank you!).

I do need to build readership, so whenever you have a chance and see something you like, please let others know or vote for me by clicking on a Digg or delicious link (at the end of the posts, Kirtsy coming soon), or shooting me a StumbleUpon thumbs up. I’m just one voice but by adding mine to the chorus singing for our natural ways, I can be one vote for a new personal wealth in simple, sustainable living. Vote for me and you can too! (Wink!)

Thank you!

Mama Hope

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