I’ve been blogging here for over 13 years, and it’s my place.
But. A little while ago, a few years back, I started using this place to earn us a little income. And doing that, somehow, put a wall in between my safe place and me.
Over the last year, I’ve drifted away, and my art and photography are on instagram and my writing has been nowhere at all. There’s no place to talk about the children any more, because I’m thinking too much about the audience, who is reading, what will they hear, will they share, have I crafted the headline for maximum impact, will this make blog of the day, get shared to facebook, will anyone care?
Do you know what?
That isn’t the important thing to me any more. I want this space back. I want to be able to talk about where we’ve been and what we’ve done, about the things I’ve drawn and the books I’ve read.
I want to talk about autism, and basic income, anxiety and reenactment, maybe just share a bit of art, maybe tell you about our home education if that’s what I feel like talking about.
I want to share our snippets of weeks or days or months, and build up my memories here – I will in years to come regret the gaps in the archives. I know this because I regret the holes there are in previous years, when life was too raw to write about because I didn’t have the words to talk about miscarriages, or because I didn’t have the energy at the end of a day of solving other people’s problems and then having a two hour drive home with tired children.
So. I’m launching a new blog, Not Just Kids Stuff, to push the commercial stuff to. It will be a business, because we need an income. I’ve launched on Patreon too, but I’m not quite sure how that is going to pan out – people liked my sea creatures, so maybe I’ll reopen my etsy store and explore selling prints. Or put them on redbubble.
And as all that does or doesn’t take off, I’ll finish off the things I’m already committed to here, and then I’ll come out of hiding again. I’ve got a lot to talk about. I hope you’re ready.
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