So, why start over? Why a brand new fresh blog?
Um, I like lists. If you've never met me before, you'll soon catch on. I LOVE a list. I have to-do lists freaking everywhere (and most often they are abandoned after two or three items get ticked off - you were warned about the disorganised bit). Yeah, let's start as we mean to go on, eh?
- The LONG hiatus. Going back to writing on Carried Family would encourage me to put pressure on myself to catch everything up, and likely cause anyone still following that feed to get sick of hearing me whine about it and/or post massive picture-heavy epistles.
- I have no idea if anyone not immediately connected via Facebook remembers who I am any more anyhow. (NOT fishing for sympathy, it's totally okay not to care!)
- The Carried Family name feels like an odd fit now that my youngest child is not breastfeeding any more, no longer likes to ride in slings, and rarely even asks for a hip carry. These guys grew a lot. I'm still attachment parent-ish, but my children are past the cosy carrying-close co-sleeping days.
- When I started writing there was nothing out there on the internet about attachment parenting with more than one child. I had been told by a number of people that I wouldn't be able to do all that "hippy stuff" with a secondborn or I'd have to neglect my first. I wanted to put out there what it was like day to day actually living out my principles. Now not only is there absolutely vast amounts out there about attachment parenting and attachment parenting a handful of children, but I'm likely to be talking about totally different things to the life I was journalling about back then. My audience may well be different. Who knows?
- Although I'm not ashamed of having changed my mind (over and over, on many subjects) and absolutely will have times when I want to do a complete about turn on something I believe strongly right now, I feel like I've changed a lot in the last couple of years especially. Maybe it's my recently *vastly* improved mental health, but I'm emotionally ready for a new space. (Do feel that you have my permission to go and find embarassing posts I wrote way back when to ridicule me with if and when I'm being particularly strident about something, though. I won't be removing or revising anything. I didn't then and I won't now, I'd rather leave it all as a reminder to myself to be a little more humble.)
- If people don't actively want to read I'd rather drop off their feeds quietly. My voice is here because blogging made me so many wonerful connections, helped me learn about myself and my values, and allowed me to reassure parents with younger children than mine that the chaos *absolutely* continues but it does get less intensively consuming.
I am planning to stop philosophising about writing, now, truly. Here, have a picture of the children instead.
