Clearing Out The Cobwebs

Pin It

Yeah.

That pretty much sums up the activity level around here lately. There are cobwebs in the corners of my blog.

It's not that I don't WANT to write more. It's just that my girls have reached a delicate age, and by delicate I mean shoot me in the face. Quickly please, I haven't got all day. The laundry isn't going to fold itself.

It's not even that I haven't been writing...I've got fourteen stories in draft status at the moment and a composition book full of ideas and dialogue for a novel that I will, in all honesty, probably never finish.

So what is behind my sudden and uncharacteristic quietness? I've been (somewhat) avoiding the Internet and guess what? It feels kind of good.

No such thing as 2 much Internet @MamaZinga. Dislike. #icanstopanytime

It is an awful thing to admit but I was getting a little too involved with my online persona. I had become "that mom". I mean, I actually heard myself telling my three year old "Hang on, mommy has to post this update"

Really.

Those words came out of my mouth. A couple of times

I told a three year old that Facebook was more important than her. Not in so many words of course, I'm not a COMPLETE monster. Just a little. Around the edges.

But seriously, I decided to pull WAY back and dropped out of roughly 256374 Facebook groups, including the ones I started. I stopped checking Twitter. Surprisingly Pinterest is managing to stay afloat despite my defection. In short, I unplugged a little. I started spending some REAL facetime with my kids and stopped getting so wrapped up in the petty squabbles of the people who live in my computer. I don't want my kids to grow up resenting how much time I spend online. I want them to be able to read this blog one day, when they're older, and catch a glimpse of me. I want them to know about my ideals and ideas, even just my sentimental ramblings. I don't want them to look back and think "So this what mom was doing all those times she shoo'd us away from the computer? What a bitch." because they were too young to tell the difference between Mom busy working on blog and Mom busy arguing with strangers in the comments on Huff Po.

Stop hitting your sister! I swear, once I'm done catching up on all these Ryan Gosling vines you're in trouble.

"But wait! Aren't you the same lady who defended a mothers right to downtime in this blog post?"

Why yes, yes I am. I still defend that right and I stand by every word I wrote then. Mom's need an outlet and kids need some independent play. I'm not a giant hypocrite, biting the hand that feeds me by slamming the medium that allows my to share these scrambled thoughts with the world. I'm just a mom looking for balance. I feel like my priorities needed a subtle alignment. I still went on Facebook, I just didn't linger. I'm slowly dipping my toes back into my groups, although I have scaled it back to three.  Most importantly I stopped reading the comments on anything even slightly controversial. Did you see the comments on that blog about that thing? I sure didn't. They may be completely innocuous but I'm not chancing it. Odds are I'll get sucked into an argument with a stranger and that would be a pointless waste of time.

Besides, I don't need a reason to bang my head against a brick wall, I've got toddlers.



Abandoned House stock photo - Image courtesy of artur84/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Shocked Lady With Laptop - Image courtesy of Michal Marcol/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Woman With Laptop In Park - Image courtesy of Marin/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pin It