Distracted Mind

This week has been tough. My job is still great, I’m still alive, and I’m not rocking in a corner muttering to myself, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard. The biggest thing has been dealing with my daughter’s daycare and the reality that my daughter is basically me, cloned.

I wasn’t what you would call an easy child. I was high strung, energetic, stubborn… what some people would call a free spirit. This caused me problems in school. My progress reports and notes from teachers always mentioned my attention span, my lack of organizational skills (worlds messiest locker, anyone?), and my temper. Back in the eighties, ADHD was still relatively new, not much was known about how ADHD manifested in girls, and I went undiagnosed. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I was diagnosed, and by then I had learned a whole slew of coping mechanisms.

On one hand, my experiences can help my daughter, regardless of whether or not she has ADHD. On the other hand, I have no desire for her to go through everything I experienced. I was on hellishly awkward kid. Prone to tears, extremely insecure, pretty much a walking target for bullies… that’s not what I want for my kid. Granted, she’s all of four years old, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not worried for the thirteen year old she’ll grow into.

I’m proud of my daughter for her fierce independence, her intelligence, her willingness to take risks. I don’t want that to be overshadowed. It’s times like this that deep breaths and living in the present are all I can do.

I’ve been doing the link blog thing for quite a while, not updating anything about my actual life. Believe it or not, there are actually reasons for this. One, I was stuck in a job that I genuinely disliked. This depressed me greatly. In fact, it downright pissed me off.

Two, I was pregnant. I was happy about this, still am, and I am now very happy to have two children. Even so, I am not, I repeat not a good pregnant woman. My last pregnancy damned near drove me crazy, and the aftermath completed the trip. Since I was actually happy about the prospect of another child, but very nervous about the possibility of going nuts again, I was naturally a little conflicted.

Stir in just a little bit of late-pregnancy complications, an unexpected c-section, and post-partum recovery, and adding a newborn to our little family, and you have a recipe for no blogging for a while. Just some links every few days.

Of course, now, the baby is out, I’m not crazy, and I’m out of the job I hated. Needless to say, I’m pretty thrilled. In fact, I feel like I got a piece of my soul back. Not only do I now have two kids that I adore, but I also have a job that genuinely challenges me and feels rewarding. The new job smell isn’t quite gone yet, but it’s still a thousand percentage points less stressful than my old one.

So that’s what’s going on, in a nutshell.