The first post (hopefully not my last)...

Once upon a time, I was a writer. And quite the prolific one, too-I turned out more dark, angst-ridden poetry than any chain-smoking, Depeche Mode loving, all-black wearing teen girl should. There was also the occasional essay on say, the meaning of life (because at 17, I had it all figured out). Then I got pregnant at 18 and had a baby girl (my Shelby) at 19. Started taking school seriously. Married my Shelby's daddy. And I worked. So all my writing energy (what there was of it) was concentrated on things like feminist deconstruction analysis of Buchi Emecheta's The Bride Price or the history of Freud. You know, things for school.

After seven long years, I finally got my BA in Psychology, Minor in Women's Studies, and got a real job. Between that, and being a wife and mother, writing fell by the wayside. Then I found myself divorced; now I was a single mother and really had no energy! Despite that, I started grad school since a bachelor's in psychology doesn't take you too far. The writing returned briefly to accomodate a particularly exasperating relationship with a coworker, and I turned out more dark, angst-ridden, "why won't you love me like I love you?" poetry. But that ended too.

So there I was, perking along, single mom in school, working full time, and doing an internship, and BAM! I fell in love for real. He was tall, dark, and Canadian, 11 years my junior, and just what I needed. But the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services isn't so easily swayed, and the excruciatingly long and painstaking process of immigration started. In the midst of that, and during my last semester of school, I was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler truck. The ensuing health problems forced a medical leave from school, but I still worked...my fiance was finally granted entrance to the US and we married...and before we knew it, we were pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy, to say the least, and I was on modified bed rest the last trimester. At 38 weeks, an ultrasound revealed our baby to be a whopping 10 pounds, 1 ounce, plus low amniotic fluid, so my c-section was scheduled for that evening. June 26, 2007, our Killian arrived. I returned to work 8 weeks later. Not soon after, my daughter was diagnosed with Asperger's-after years of misdiagnosis, medications, and bewilderment.

All that time, my writing was confined to a personal journal. That is, until I found Yelp. Hoorah! A place I could offer my totally unsolicited opinion on everything from restaurants to doctors, and once in awhile, people actually expressed appreciation for my writing AND opinions. It was heaven. Yet something was missing...

This past year has found my husband laid off from his job and me with an autoimmune disorder called Ankylosing Spondylitis. A month after I disclosed this to my employer, they let me go. So here I sit, jobless, contending with a disease that will make the sanest person crazy (one of the complications of AS is iritis, aka "arthritis in the eyes"-enough said?), still madly in love with my French-Canadian, trying to live and take care of our kids...and something an old, dear friend said is nagging at me. Back in September, around my 20th high school reunion, I was blessed enough to reconnect with some people I thought of as soul mates during my teen years (still do, really). My friend was describing her daughter to me and she said, "she's a lot like you. A writer". Me? A writer? Man, I don't know when I last called myself that. I mean, I haven't written a lick of bad poetry in at least 10 years. But what if I am? I am thoroughly burned out on social work and while I still hold dear the tenets of social justice, I don't think I have it in me to be a decent direct services provider. Years of being underpaid and overworked, with the consistent chipping away of resources for my clients, have seen to that. And I would be doing a grave disservice to the most vulnerable of people if I tried to be a social worker again. Could I actually make money from writing?

I don't have a great American novel in me (yet). The relationship with my husband is too happy to inspire any tortured poetry. Blogging is an easy choice, but what do I blog about? Ankylosing spondylitis? Not too many people know about it, the public could use some education, but does anyone want to hear about my eye arthritis or the funny infections (not THOSE kind, the kind that needs a hospital stay) caused by the meds I have to take for the AS? Should I write about the ecstatic highs and surreality of being a wife and mother AGAIN? I know there are more and more women like me, who don't plan on remarrying or having more kids yet find themselves precisely there, with kids who are 16 years apart. Would they want to hear what I have to say? Maybe politics...but there are so many political bloggers already, and it seems like the family bloggers stay away from politics so as not to alienate their audience. If I stay honest, however, it's going to be a hard topic to avoid because like I said, even though I don't want to practice social work, I am still a social worker. Toilet training! Because God knows that's taken over every single aspect of my life...every day is full of M&M bribes just to get my son to sit on the toilet, not to mention the planning of every activity around his bowel movements. Maybe Asperger's, since that's become a huge part of our lives. How to keep all the utilities on and food on the table when both breadwinners are on unemployment? Transcripts of the snarky conversations my spouse and I have while watching bad (and sometimes good) film?

I don't know. Maybe all of it. I know at least my friends and family will visit the blog, if not to hear what I have to say, then to click on some of the ads and generate income for us so we are less likely to ask them for money. Perhaps some strangers will wander here as well after Googling "Ankyosing Spondylitis" or "free porn" and they'll decide to stay.

Side note: if you arrived here after Googling "free porn", my apologies. I wanted to increase traffic to the site. I'd offer you some naked pictures of me in return for your troubles, but after viewing them, you'd probably just get more pissed off.

Anyway, here I go. I can't promise brilliance, but I can promise honesty. If you think of some cool gimmick, like "Julie and Julia", let me know. The teenaged fantasy of me sitting at the typewriter, thoughtful fedora perched on my head, surrounded by a bottle of Southern Comfort and an overflowing ashtray like some kind of crazed Hemingway crossed with Janis Joplin, furiously pounding away every joy and heartache on the keyboard, is gone. Now it's just me, close to forty, sitting here with a laptop and a cup of decaf blueberry tea, surrounded by 4 snoozing cats and a toddler gleefully screaming "uh-oh!" as he urinates on the floor. For now, it's just me, the...writer?