Sometimes I feel like a juggler. With lots and lots of pretty balls, more than I can count. And I just have to keep catching and tossing and catching and tossing to keep everything going.
I don’t know why I don’t say no, no more balls. All I ever seem to say is yes please, and another few are hurtled at me. It’s easier not to look at how many there are, or how fragile some of them might be, and any time I start to worry that they are getting close to the floor, I hide, in the words of a blog, or in the characters of twitter.
The ppl on twitter are like little bouncy rubber balls. None of you rely on me. You’ve got lots of ppl out there catching and throwing you, and after all, you’re all made of rubber, so you bounce anyway. If I give you a push, it just gives you that bit more energy, so you bounce a little higher.
Not such a bad analogy I think.
I don’t feel much like a bouncy ball myself atm though. I feel like a slightly deflated one. I’ve taken on too much – I don’t know why I do it. When I worked for other ppl, it was easy to say no, you’ve given me too much, if you want that, then I can’t do this. Here at home with the children I never think about how long something will take when I say yes I’d love to, I don’t look at the effort I’ll have to put in, and I haven’t been organising myself as if employed.
The fact of the matter is I’m not very good at life. I’m not very good at ppl. I’m certainly not nearly as good at parenting as I’d like to be – I don’t have ever half the answers, and days like today, I don’t feel like I have any. I make a mean pizza, with the help of a breadmaker, but that’s about the limit of my domestic goddesshood, and I still haven’t worked out what I’d like to be when I grow up.
I knew what I wanted to be when I was little. I wanted to be a vet. But I didn’t get the A levels and by the time I’d worked out that I really really wanted to be a vet, I’d also worked out that it really wouldn’t work. I think I was nearly 30 at that point.
Now I’m nearly 40. Very nearly 40. It would be helpful if I knew what I wanted to do with my life, given that I’m probably well over halfway through it!
I wanted to be an author too. A proper real author, who wrote fiction books that ppl read. Which would really mean I’d need to write one.
I wrote lots as a teenager. And a few while I was at university. But none since. I still have a box of manuscripts in the garage, unfinished stories, tales without ends. I’d like to finish one, sometime, and maybe even get it published.
I’m not really getting to the point of this. I’m not even sure there is a point of this. Perhaps it’s in the way of an apology. Perhaps I’m trying to work something out. I’m trying to say if I seem to disappear a bit, recede somewhat, it isn’t you, it’s me. I’d like to be there for you, but I need to be there for me first. And to do that, I need to work out who me is. So if you’re one of my twitter bouncy balls, I do care. I’m thinking of you already. I miss you loads. But I’m going away next week, and will have to go cold turkey as I’ve no way of taking you with me and when I come back, I need to have worked out how to do all this better.
I hope you’ll still be there for me from time to time. Will you?
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