creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Trojan Horse

by 18 Comments

This is one of those stories that I’m hesitating to tell because I’m afraid of being accused of bragging. My almost 4-year-old built this:


Then my husband said, “This looks like the Trojan Horse.” (Well, actually like the Tojan horse with its foal.) We didn’t quite remember the story of the Trojan Horse, so of course we looked it up. Then, because that’s the way those things go in our house, my husband fetched his copy of the Ilias. In German though, not Greek, we don’t go overboard with this. My husband began reading a passage out loud and our son said, “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?”

Storytelling time (and before breakfast as you can see by my husband attire).

And then the Greek made war with Troja. And the Trojans didn’t want the Greeks to come into their city. Then the Greek built a big wooden horse. The Trojans took the horse into their city and then the Greek opened the gates from within.

“And what did Helena do then?”

Does anybody know the answer?

Why should anyone care what I’m blogging about?

by 13 Comments

I’ve had this on a post-it note on top of my desk for a couple of days. I read about it on one of the 105 blogs that I’m reading daily. ‘Though I have to admit that the question may have occurred to me without help once or twice. Yesterday I took a pen and wrote beneath it:

WHY NOT?

I am claiming my blog back.

I’ve been feeling a little down with the blog and the not-making music enough and the no-more-shrinking lately. (The reading of 105 blog feeds and the daily watching of two episodes of “Buffy, the Vampire-Slayer” may be a reason for this unproductive phase.) I felt all full of self-pity, constantly thinking, “Nobody wants to read my blogs, why am I doing this?” Each morning I open my stats before even checking my inbox and I go like, “Oh, only six hits!”. What I keep forgetting is that:

  1. While it is true that I do have two blogs, they are only mirroring each other. Same content, different language. So I might feel better if I didn’t see them as separate. So it’s not six hits, but twelve.
  2. Of course people won’t come to my blog daily, when I’m posting only two or three times a week.
  3. What I’m blogging about is not very mainstream.
  4. I’m not the world’s best writer. Especially not in English.
  5. There are hundreds of fantabulous bloggers out there. If I were not me, I’d probably read them and not me too.

Well, with me there always has to be a but, so here it is: If I were not me, maybe I wouldn’t care about the writing style or anything, if there were another blogger writing about the topics that are dear to my heart. In all my struggling with being creative on the side while parenting, cleaning, exercising, teaching and what not, I’d like to see other mothers like me. I’d love to read all about it and about the, “How do you do it?”

Of course I ‘d like to have lots and lots of readers. And I’m working on bettering the blog. So I’m reading copyblogger and problogger and Liz Strauss and Creating passionate users. I even subscribed to an eCourse to better my blog. This course has left me thinking. All of these resources are geared towards professional bloggers. They help you to make money from your blog. ‘Though I’d love to be paid for all the work I’m doing here, I don’t think this will happen in the near future. (Not with six plus six readers anyway.)

This blog is not a “product”. I’m writing what I’d like to read. This is why I’ve gone back to the “essay-format” that I started in. This is why I’m not blogjolting anymore. I love the thought of a group of bloggers helping each others and recommending each others, but I won’t point people towards other blogs only because somebody told me so.

I found that I enjoy bloggers more, who maybe don’t post daily but when they so they have something to say. Like Martina Kink or Jori DesJardins. I like bloggers who write about creativity and struggles and are authentic. Like Christine Kane. Finding her blog almost stopped me writing mine. She does it so much better than me. But this is like in music. It’s not about being the best. There’s room for a lot of bloggers. Even for a lot of bloggers not on the top 100 technocrati ranks. Even for bloggers with a ranking of about 660,000. (I’m flabbergasted! I just went to technocrati to look up my ranking and instead of 660,000 something, I’m 260,062. Or “Diapers and Music” is. “Windeln und Musik” just sank down from 880,000ish to 1,000,000ish.)

This would be even worth it if I only wrote it for the three of my friends who are reading this. But I like having six plus six readers. And I’m trying to get more. But I won’t spend my time to worry about readers and about my posting schedule and then become the member of yet another blogger network just to gain readers. And I know that the German blogging scene is a little smaller than the American one. And from what I read on other people’s blogs their blog taste is quite different from mine. Short posts about three times a day. Of course there is a lot of the “And then I had coffee and then I went to the mall and then I watched TV variety of blogging. Which I enjoy only if it is written extremely well.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Help, I’m addicted to self-help books!

by 11 Comments

So now, I’m confessing, I am addicted to self-help books. I finally realized this, when I had signed up for the eCourse “Ten days to better blogging” or something, then didn’t do my homework and saw that I hadn’t done my homework on the following self-help thingies too:

  1. the “The Vein of Gold”-programm
  2. “Take Time for Your Life”
  3. “Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living”
  4. some assignments from Christine Kane

The Vein of Gold-programm I have been trying to do since – let me think – 1999. Yep, that’s about right. I started it twice, and have done five of the tasks so far. I’m on page 65. The book has 368 pages. So, seven times six, it might take me the next 42 years to complete this. I have to say in my favor that one of the tasks involved writing down the story of my life. The document has a total of 118 pages and 47,724 words. In between the starting and the finishing of this task I wrote three versions of my dissertation, got pregnant and had a child. “Vein of Gold” is a book by Julia Cameron to help you unblock your creativity.

This extraordinary book of learning through doing features inspiring teachings on the creative process and more than hundred imaginative, involving, and energizing tasks. Each task engages the readers in “inner play”, leading to authentic growth, renewal, and healing.

Read that, “more than a hundred” tasks. Um.

The “Take time for your life”-book by Cheryl Richardson I took up on the suggestion of Christine. I thought, polishing my time-management-skills might be good for me, since I’m struggling a little bit with the “make time for my music”-part. And reading is always fun. I took off on the first weeks assignments, then had to set it aside. Ah, looking through my journal I can say, the last task I attempted was “look for a coaching group”. On July 3. But of this year, that’s quite a relief. As far as I recall, I tried to join a Life Makeover Group in my vicinity twice. No reply. And while I’d appreciate having like-minded people around, I’m not willing to start a group of my own.

“Trust your vibes”: Oh, I love Sonia Choquette’s books about as much as Julia Cameron’s. But I never really worked with one. Recently I have been listening to her radio show, and thought it would be a good thing to pull the book out again, and maybe do one or two of the exercises. So far, I’m at the start of part 3 of 9. It’s a little easier to do than the other two programs since it doesn’t require the completion of certain tasks before going further.

The one “assignment” by Christine I have been wanting to do for this month is the monthly goal-setting. Though I never did it “right”, it helped a lot in July. Well, there is quite a bit of month still left…

I really like self-help books and some of them have helped me tremendously. Like “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” and “Why Weight?: A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating” by Geneen Roth. But sometimes I think that they are still another form of procrastination and of thinking too much. What Sonia Choquette calls “mental constipation”. Sometimes I feel that I’m – as Leanne Ely once put it – trying to read myself thin. Only I’m trying to read myself spiritual, creative and efficient.

As always I’m ambivalent on this. Doing the exercises helps. But they are not a means of their own. They’re meant to help me to do something specific. So, when I don’t do the specific thing because the self-help exercises are taking up all my time and energy …

Okay, here’s my plan:

  1. Forget about “Vein of Gold” for the moment. It has been sitting on the shelf for months now, it can sit there a little longer.
  2. Go to the next chapter of “Take time for your life” without having found a community. Do the next task on the list.
  3. Next weekend read the next chapter of “Trust your vibes”.
  4. Today, write down my monthly goals for October any way I can. Skip the “Do it right.”-attitude.
  5. Do assignment 1 and 3 of the “10 days to a better blog”-course. Skip number two.

Sometimes I wonder, if everybody tends to heap herself with tasks and projects all the time. Or is it only me?

Technorati Tags: ,

Firsts

by 14 Comments

Things I did last week that I never had done before:

  • ordered a bra online,
  • after undressing I put my underwear and socks directly into the trash can (full of holes),
  • ate nothing for 26 hours, though I wasn’t sick,
  • had a coloscopy (and everything is fine, thank you),
  • spontaneously played the intro to “Nothing Else Matters” to a student on the guitar, ‘though I don’t know how,
  • had a guitar lesson myself while growing tipsier and tipsier (Well, my husband is teaching me.),
  • sold the stroller and the tricycle,
  • made a budget and compared it to our actual expenses (Well, I didn’t say that we actually stayed within the budget.),
  • lost 4 pounds in one day (The not eating might do this to you. Don’t try this at home! (And they’re back on anyway.)),
  • took my laptop with me to the big city and wrote a blog post while sitting in a café (Next time I’ll take my husband’s backpack instead of my more stylish but wrecking my shoulder laptop bag.)
  • sold one of my computer games online
  • signed up for a free eCourse on blogging (Thank you, Wendy Piersall.)

do what you want or surrender

by 6 Comments

Well, the ones of you that are actually following this blog might have wondered, when I’d write the post on “do what you want or surrender” that I mentioned a couple of days weeks ago. So, here it is:

When I was about twelve years old I got a book that deeply impressed me: “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende. For those of you who don’t remember, that’s a fantastic story about a boy entering a magical land of fairy. He gets a medaillon with the inscription: “Do what you want.” At first he thinks what nearly everyone would be thinking that it’s all about getting everything he fancies. But because this is a book for young readers, of course there’s a moral to it, and in the end it’s about doing what you really want. With all of the consequences.

I thought about that a lot. Since then I’ve been in the habit of asking myself several times a day, if I really want what I’m doing. And if it will lead me ultimately into the direction I want my life to be heading.

In spite of the gap that lies between my knowing and my doing this helped me for example never to start smoking: I was about 13 years old, standing in a park with a herd of teenagers, holding a cigarette in my hand, because smoking was so cool then. I stopped and thought, “Do I really want to do this?” No, I didn’t, so I extinguished the half-smoked cigarette and never did it again.

“Do what you want.” helped me not to study business studies like everybody else did. And later after university it helped me not to become a computer programmer.

So it is a very helpful thought. You stop, you think about the relationship between your deeds and your ultimate goal, and it helps feeling powerful, because you know that it was your own decision.

Only that I started thinking again. I’m going all new agey hear. Maybe it’s not all about what I want. (Something a mother can’t stop thinking.) Maybe there’s a bigger plan. Maybe God is trying to lead me and I’m constantly struffling against it? (Okay, here it is, the G-word. Sorry.)

So, while I didn’t stop asking myself, “Do I really want to do this?” (I even started changing my doing accordingly.), I’m relaxing a little. Pray for guidance and help. And, you know, my life has become just a little bit easier. I don’t have to do it all on my own.

Wow.

KISS

by 27 Comments

I should have this tattooed on my forehead! Not, because kissing is always good (well, with the right person anyway), but because this is an acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”.

I read about this as part of the latest blogjolt. I looked around Angel Copes‘ blog 1smartmom, and found this, which lead me here, to Robyn Tippins‘ blog Inside Motherhood.

So they both remind me that I can’t really do it all at once. Between the parenting and the housework and the teaching and the blog and the music, no wonder that there is no time for friends or anything else. But what do I skip? Right now about the only thing really expendable is the blog, I’m afraid. But do not fear, I’ll keep it for yet another while.

Technorati Tags: ,