It has been over a month, once again, since I’ve been here. I have been plagued with what seemed at first to be allergies, but became a never ending cold, and eventually culminated in a sinus infection. I finally left work early to take myself to the doctor last Monday and got a ten day round of antibiotics. That’s 3:3 if we’re looking at years teaching here : rounds of antibiotics.
I’ve also been learning to navigate this whole pregnancy thing, and overall just trying to keep up with how fast life is going. School can’t possibly end soon enough, so that part is dragging, but everything else seems to be flying rather quickly. Or maybe it’s just the lack of sleep talking.
I’ve been mulling over writing a post more about what I’m experiencing in this pregnancy, partly to document for myself and the future, and partly because it’s the biggest thing going on in my life that I can write about. But I’m a little unsure of how I want this blog thing to progress now… Do I really want it to turn into a full scale mom-blog? Sometimes I think I don’t care, and sometimes I shudder at the thought.
Another thing that has made me hesitate about posting is that I’ve had a few conversations with my husband about the blog. Those of you who read regularly or who have been following me for a long time may be surprised by how secretive I am about my blog with the people I know outside of the internet. I think only a couple of my closest friends have ever known that I’ve blogged, and even some of those have been led to believe that it was a thing of the past and not worth digging up. There are probably 3 or 4 non-family members who know that it is in any way current or that my interest in it continues.
So all that is to say that even during the time Jefferson and I were friends, and then dating, and even engaged, I very rarely brought it up, despite writing about him and us often… and I never really offered to give him a link or tell him the name. It isn’t because I have anything to hide… there are no “secrets” here that he does not know. There’s a lot of my past in one place, which used to scare me in terms of him reading it all, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest anymore. He knows who I am right now as well as I do, so glimpsing the past should cause no strife. But in the past month or so it came up a couple of times that I still write from time to time, but never mention it to him. His question was completely fair – If it’s that important to me, why do I never mention to him that I took the time to write? I completely understand how from his perspective that seems mighty secretive. It had just never occurred to me that he would be interested in it.
He didn’t dissuade me from writing, he’s even encouraged me. But he has made a couple of comments in passing over the past several weeks (rarely connected with blog related conversations) that my (and my family’s) idea of privacy or “private information” is very different from his. So whereas I enjoy writing about my life and the good and bad things that accompany it, he hardly even speaks to close friends about the ins and outs of our lives. This gave me pause. I had a lot of questions to ask myself:
Should I stop writing about myself, about our marriage, our growing family, our plans, our ideas, our conversations? If it’s his nature to keep it to himself, would it not be more considerate for me to defer to that? Should I write only about things that are less personal, things I would mention to anyone I work with or talk to regularly? Should I reserve the topics I write about for only in-person conversations entirely, rather than typing them out?
Some other ideas also had to be pondered in order to think through this: I’m about to be a stay-at-home mom, with very little social life. I already have an almost negligible social life, and only one or two people outside of my family that I “confide in” or have life-conversations with. Who would I talk to if I swore off all the writing? An infant? Already my writing is a lot sparser and less open than it was when I originally began this wonderful writing adventure – it’s changed right along with my life, and I don’t regret that for the most part.
I think I will have another conversation with my husband about this. I wonder if it bothers him as a whole, or just because I don’t talk to him about it. Maybe I don’t even have to think about changing things up, and just have to be more transparent with him about it.
Side thought: if I had to write about this to even think it out… maybe that tells me a lot too…
I’ll be back, at the very least to say my piece about whatever we decide, and if I had to guess, I’ll be back for more than just that. I want to tell you guys about the baby I’m making, and share our first ultrasound picture from a few weeks ago!
Nothing Was Said 