Category Archives: Blog

My squirrelly niche…

A long time ago I started this blog with the vague idea that I would become a titan of the blogosphere, writing about being a mom and a lawyer, writing about saving the environment for my children, writing about making my own baby food while crossposting articles from my side gig writing for Attachment Parenting International.

During this time of grandiosity I studied the art of blogging as only a woman who just sat for the Bar Exam after three and a half years of intensive study and then became a stay at home mother in rural New Jersey can, obsessively. I learned you are supposed to choose your niche and write about it passionately, truthfully, and with a raw openness that lets complete strangers into your bleeding inner core in a way you don’t even let your friends in.

That my dears is the way to internet stardom.

Well I don’t have a problem with writing passionately, or really with bleeding my feelings all over the internet. Y’all are really pretty decent and besides, it’s not like I’m going to run into to you at the next cocktail party and have that embarrassing moment when you recognize me. No, my problem was always the niche.

See I, my dear friends, am an interest whore.

I am interested in ALL THE THINGS. I want to read about the things and learn to do the things and write about the things. I want to blog about being a mom and a spoonie and an artist who paints and also makes stuff in 3D and also draws and also makes cards but is also a poet but also writes serious stuff but writes about being sick but can cook and wants to share recipes and loves to take pictures and did you know I make jewelry and am a silversmith and am looking at wood working and oooooh let me share my photography with you and here’s the song I started writing to go with the Kalimba I started playing to help with pain management and do you Yoga and have you tried kayaking and did you know the neuroscience behind exercise and fibromyalgia and the venom in tarantulas in Peru and I have some really good ways my husband and I deal with being chronically ill and I can share those with you and I can talk about parenting teens and….

Yeah. What I am passionate about and interested in is the same thing a fleet of hyperactive squirrels on too much caffeine are interested in and passionate about. Everything.

So after years of trying to write about what fits in the narrowly defined idea of a blog about something other people might like to read I have just given up officially and am just going to put it all out here.

I’m writing down poems and sharing the art. I’m going to talk about the pain and the things that help, the kids and the world and the interesting things I find. I’m going to share and overshare and I am going to enjoy it. Because I finally did find my niche.

It’s me. I’m my niche.

Falling off the face of the internet…

It’s not that I want to lose my readers and wave goodbye to the hard earned stats acquired after two solid years of blogging effort. (Though sadly my 200 or more readers a day is down to between 13 and 40. Hello there 1-40! Sorry I haven’t posted much lately!)

It’s that I have nothing to say.

It’s true. I seem to be out of words the second I sit down to blog. When I was lonely in Jersey the words spilled out of my mind and onto my keyboard multiple times a day, but now, now I can barely think of anything to say. Hell, sometimes lately I feel as though Facebook is too much of a social commitment for me. I had to quit Twitter because there was no way I was adding that much constant communication to my day.

Is that nuts? Is it weird to love something so much you have to restrain yourself from doing it all the time and then suddenly want to stop?

I know blogging made me feel healthier, and I think maybe I should keep at it, regardless of my reluctance.

So… one post a week. That is my goal. One post a week is a good start. It won’t hit the over 200 posts I had my first year, but it might give me a chance to put up Otter’s bday pictures, share my office stories, and rejoin this world that cradled me when times were tough. It may give me a chance to reconnect with my far away friends, my internet friends, and the people I connect with, even though we have never met in person.

After all, I blogged when I had a new baby, and now, my work is my new baby. I have a lot of exciting things going on in my little office under the stairs. Maybe it’s time to transition away a little for motherhood and write more about law.

However, Otter is next… once I have edited the photos, his birthday party, complete with ball pit and balloon forest, will be up for your perusing pleasure. After all… a kiddo birthday can’t be ignored, regardless of the stack of grant proposals piling up on one’s desk.

To blog, or not to blog, that is the question…

My journey through the twists and turns of career-like employment has taken yet another unexpected path.

For the past several months I have been building a practice, reveling working from home, and lamenting how long it takes to get any real business up and running. I have been networking like a mad fiend, and talking to everyone who may have been able to advise me, direct me, teach me, or assist me in starting this practice. As a result of this hard (if unpaid) work, this month, January, marks the period when I will be able to actually count on regular work, and therefore regular income, from my practice.

So it should come to no surprise to any of you that now is when I get a legititmate employment inquiry.

Yes, that’s right, I have been given an opportunity to discuss an alternative to starting my own practice. I meet with the lovely woman and potential would be boss in a week, three days before I am supposed to accept the contract that will infuse my practice with opportunity. I will give more details about the would be job when I am finished meeting with her and know more about whether or not there is a solid offer to consider. However… there is a slight problem with the potential position. In order to safely accept it, I may have to delete my blog.

Which takes us to the crux of this post.

If I end up with a job resulting from this meeting it will be one that involves making criminals very unhappy. As a result, those criminals may wish to exact revenge upon me. Ergo… I should not have a blog, with pictures of my family, in existence when those criminals go a looking. (That would be verra verra bad.)

Due to the sheer amount of time and energy I have put into this blog (albeit not lately) I find this very distressing. The thought of no longer having this wonderful connection to the world saddens me. However, it would be silly to turn down a really good position and opportunity to learn from an amazing mentor just to keep a blog.

So I am thinking I will likely save the blog in a series of books, through one of the many book making options out there, and delete the creature of my creation from the blogosphere. Hopefully, I will then be able to create a new blog (without pictures and directions to my house), that I can use to discuss the non-confidential aspects of my new career (if there is one). I can’t stand the thought of deleting these pages without saving them to something, I have written so much about my life in the past two or so years. This blog is a baby book, journal, diary, and christmas letter in one!

I suppose another option would be to save it in book form, and then painstakingly go through every single page and delete all the photos and identifiable references to my family. Then I could take the blog in a new direction without appearing to be a brand new blog with no posts in history. (This post marks my 567th such writing since the blog began.)

What do you think? Is there a way to save the blog if I take a chance on criminal law?