Where Have All The Blog Posts Gone

…sung to the tune of Where Have All the Cowboys Gone, by Paula Cole…”where is my John Wayne, where is my prairie song, where is my happy ending, where have all the cowboys gone”. I digress.

Oddly enough there is a line in that song, “I will raise the children if you pay all the bills”, which is really pertinent to life right now. I think she’s volunteering for the hard job there. Raising a kid (much less kids) I’m learning is a really difficult, full time, overtime, crazy, stressful job. I keep telling Bill how nice it must be to get an 8 hour break from the babe and go to work (he protests this every time I mention it). And as I type that it sounds really really terrible. Don’t get me wrong I love…LOVE my baby. There are times when she’s in my arms and I look down at her and I think “holy cow who are we to receive such a gift from heaven”. Or there are times when she wakes up in the morning next to me or in her bassinet at the foot of our bed (it depends on the day and how the night went) and her eyes are open and wondering and she sees my face and she instantly smiles and it melts my heart. But there are other times when she’s screaming for hours, or wet, again, or hungry again or bored again and I can’t remember the last time I showered or put on makeup and I think “wow, this is my life now”. It’s exhausting. And on top of it all I’m trying to run a business which is like another baby, equally as needy.

Let’s just say it’s been a rough week. She’s going through a growth spurt (I think) which makes her extra hungry and extra cranky and it means the schedule we finally nailed down is all going to change again. We’re also coming off the whirlwind of senior season which has been incredibly fulfilling artistically and humbling as I still can not believe so many people want me to photograph their families. I still blush a little when people compliment my work. I can not express my thanks enough to my clients, because without them I’d be doing a job somewhere that I hate and would not be fulfilled by, and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to stay home during the day with Issa and get to experience things like her first laugh or being projectile vomited on, missing my mouth by mere inches.

One of the many sessions I have to share.

In this new life my attention and time is divided. Most of it goes towards Issa, the rest goes towards producing the best images I can and working with clients to make sure those images get shown in the best possible way in their homes and on cards and products (I’d hate to spend time making art and have it sit on a hard drive forever). And as much as I detest it, and the marketing/advertising person in me is cringing, things like blogging, and updating websites, and facebook have kind of gone to the back burner over the last 11 weeks. And while I’m feeling incredibly unbalanced, it’s ok because the thing is, the important things are getting done; making art, keeping diapers clean, creating happy clients, bonding with my kid. I’m just trying to smudge out the part of me that goes crazy that I have several shoots that have not been posted on facebook or my blog, that the photos on the website haven’t been updated in a year, and that there is a never ending pile of laundry on the floor of my bedroom.

Still I have hope that balance will one day return. I know it will never be like it was because now I have a tiny sweet baby girl that relies on me to live. But we will make adjustments and changes and my other baby, the business will change shape and morph, as it should.

So where have all the blog posts gone? Well they’re with all the other things I’ve deemed less important, hanging out on the back burner, waiting patiently in line to be picked up again as I slowly find balance in this ever changing new life called parenthood.