Awkward Mom vs. Jealousy

I am serious when I tell you; I have completely lost track of which number battle this is. It is well in the millions. 

I think the Huffington Post hates me.

Because I keep sending them blog posts that I have recrafted into pithy little articles about important mom stuff, like swim suits (aka body image), homemaking (aka accepting one's limitations), the museum (aka structured play), the zoo (aka unstructured play), work (aka self-worth), and the Muppets (aka the Muppets). This seems to be the stuff they like to spotlight. (Well, except for the Muppets; I just really really love the Muppets.) They haven't spotlighted me so far, which is cool. They don't need to. It's their website and they should do what they please. Except.....

They need to stop showing other mom bloggers' recrafted blog posts about the exact same thing that I have sent in, the day after I send it in. And my friends need to stop posting these articles on my Facebook wall with things like "Hey Erin, this sounds like something you would like!" or "Hey Erin, didn't you blog about this once?" or "Hey Erin, you should write about this, only funny!" Or God needs to stop this lesson in humility because I totally get it. Seriously Dude, once would have been sufficient. (Yeah, I call God Dude; we're close.)

I get this lesson in jealousy. I'm not new here and jealousy is an old foe of mine. He pesters most of us at one time or another; he isn't picky and he is very very hungry. I mean, look at him: 

It takes bothering a lot of folks to maintain that shape. 

Here's my point (finally): I think I have a lot of cool stuff to say and I think I have found a cool way to say it, so I try to get folks to read it. I know you guys read it and I LOVE you from here to the moon. But I am human and greedy and very very aware of all the other mommy bloggers out there. The ones with the fancy layouts and the professional looking pictures and seemingly endless page views and I start to wonder "why not me? what am I doing wrong?" So I try. I send my stuff to this magazine and that web site and this guest blogger spot and that one and the Huffington Post, but so far nothing has happened and that should be okay because this stuff takes time, and I might be doing it wrong anyway, but I am impatient. And before you know it, I look like old green blob up there.

I don't want to look like that and I think the Dude is telling me to stop looking like that. He is telling me: "Save your energy for the Mommy Wars, Awkward Mom. You are gonna need it." OK, I'm kidding, but admit it, it is really funny to picture God saying that. It totally is. 

No, God's not sending me on a personal Mommy Crusade. He's just reiterating  my normal life-lesson; the one He needs to repeat over and over because I can't seem to get it. The one that says: just because I am not the best in the room doesn't mean that I am not good. AWKWARD MOM, YOU ARE ENOUGH. Yep, that one sounds familiar.

I love my fellow blogger moms and I want to read their stuff and say "Oh! That's so cool! Nicely put. What an interesting take. Good job!" I don't want to give them envious side-eye and seethe with hate because they just happened to say something first or better or more abundantly or in a less weird-super-heroy-way. I want to celebrate that any member of our tribe is doing well and drawing attention to wonderful and varied world of raising children. The world is large and has room for all of us, and in that vein, the internet is large and has room for me, all my fellow mommy bloggers, and 1 billion cat videos.

Here's my point (my real one): I have been a writer for a long time. I have 12 started novels, numerous short stories, poems aplenty, and more moody journals than a goth Emily Dickinson with a crush, but my best writing comes from 4 very unique little inspirations:

This blog is for them. They inspire it. They create it with their adventures and lust for life. I just follow them around like a bemused and way-out-of-my-depth Dr. Watson. (Don't tell me that you really needed that link, Readers. Please, just don't.) I keep a journal for each of my children. A journal that I intend to give them when they leave for college or Europe or, in Super Toddler's case, to headline her first national tour. A journal that they will toss in a closet or at the bottom of a box somewhere in their hurry to run off with their friends. A journal they might use to prop up a broken window or straighten out a garage-sale table in their first apartment. A journal that will grow dusty and old and mysterious. A journal that they will hopefully not throw away in the purge that follows their first big heart-break. A journal they will open one day when they decide I am not just some old woman who loved them because I had to but a whole and complete person they are curious about. They will crack open those dusty, probably moldy, books, a moth will fly out, and scare their pants off. But then they will sit down and read. And read. And read. And have to pee but hold it just to read. Because what they they will find is abridged versions of what you read here every week, with a permanent markered link to this website on the back cover, a huge smiley face, and the words "I love you, awkwardly." And they'll finally go to the bathroom on their way to their computer/phone/micro-chip that lives in their heads. They'll settle in and they'll read some more. And they won't be able to stop because they will be reading about themselves, in all their glory and with all their magic. Four humans who changed the world forever. They'll smile. Or cry. Or laugh. Or all of it. And they will know that they are so so very loved. And then they'll probably have to pee again.

And if that is the result of all my writing, well, that is enough. It's more than enough. And so am I.

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." -Benjamin Franklin