Reflecting

I just spent a good hour looking back through the early posts of my blog. Several things stood out to me, mainly how different I seem now compared to the younger me only 4+ short years ago. My writing style and voice are different; I made an effort to be witty and funny then, now I document our family's life, namely my children. I wrote a lot about dental hygiene, (I should count how many times I admonished my readers to floss!), I documented the seemingly silly shopping I did, talked about myself a lot (I didn't have kids, so I talked about myself), with keeping my weight in check and my sweet tooth. I lamented about trying to stay in shape, though looking back now I would kill for that old body! Silly. I also blogged for fun. I think I was more fun then, more naive perhaps? Phil has even said that I am much different now and I told him I think I just grew up.

"Everyone" was blogging back then and you took pictures of random every day stuff and wrote about it. It was rather "look at me! look at me!". In some posts I cringe at myself and am tempted to delete the entry(ies) but am keeping it so I can continue to look back and see how I have changed. Whether I have grown up for better or worse remains to be seen, I am sure I will look back at myself now and cringe at times.

We were childless, having just lost Camden, I was working full-time, Phil was a full-time student at ASU. Life was pretty darn easy and I thought we were busy then; YW president, work but plenty of time for leisure. Life was "good". We had a lovely comfortable life.

Life is good now, just vastly different. Three kids under the age of three, medical school and living off of student loans leaves little time for leisure and the old life we led. I mentioned these thoughts to Phil tonight and he teased me, asking if I felt I needed to find myself again. But I think I do. Right now my purpose is children and taking care of my family. It defines me. We are busy in a different way, we have so much more stress in our life, I am consumed and obsessed with my children. The blog is dominated by their sweet mugs and their latest antics. Darling for me to read through but I am sure it gets old for others. And yet I don't care. Because the purpose of this blog is to record our family, I am not blogging in a narcissistic fashion anymore, unless posting a million pictures of my children is my new narcissism.

I am deliberate in what I blog, how I word things, what I share. I try to include the little details I want to remember and know I will forget otherwise. I write with the end in mind, knowing that I want to print the blog into a family journal, make a permanent record. I try to use proper grammar, don't use emoticons or obvious Internet lingo. I even struggled with what to name this post. When did I become so anal? I should loosen up. :) Wheeee! (I totally put that smiley in and then deleted it and then put it in again. Progress?)

I am totally writing this on the fly as these thoughts come to me, when I should be capitalizing on precious sleep time. Where these ramblings are going I don't really know but it did make me want to find pieces of that old Heather again. But take her and who I am now and make myself even better. We are always evolving and are products of what life throws at us and what we make of it. I do want my voice to be present, I want a record of it so my children get a glimpse of who Heather is/was, not just me in the role of their mother. I am going to work on finding myself again, taking time to do something(s) just for me, to fill my bucket so I can give more to those I love and interact with. To be my best self. And I think I will record it.

** Edited to add: 15 minutes after I hit publish I am still thinking about what I wrote. Maybe I am being too harsh on my old self. I blogged about my life then; it was all about me and Phil, my job, my awesome-to-me life. And that is okay. That is who I was at the time and my writings weren't always in a showy manner, though I do think I blogged more for others than myself. It is what it is. Now, off to bed before Rhett wakes.