Okay, so the “anti-blogger” in the title of this post is a misnomer.
I’m not the opposite of a blogger. I’m not ready to stop blogging. And I certainly don’t dislike other bloggers (many of whom I’m privileged to call friends).
But as I’ve tried to explain my own personal journey over the past couple of years, anti-blogger is the term that comes closest to describing how I feel.
You see, seven years ago, when I started blogging, I had all the answers. Oh, how I had the answers. I’m still fairly confident in my own choices and decisions. Still, the longer I’ve blogged and the longer I’ve mothered, and the longer I’ve worked and homeschooled, the more convinced I’ve become that blogging has fallen into the trap of trying to provide perfect answers in tidy little packages for every area of our life.
Table of Contents
Life is messy
And…well…life is messy and full of other people, and very little of it can actually be tied up in a bow.
So while I might share the homeschooling schedule that’s working for us or the keys to a simple morning routine or solutions for your paper clutter, I’m less convinced that these are the answer to life’s problems and more sure that they’re simply one option and the option that works for me here and now.
For example, all of my clutter solutions that worked when my children were tiny magically lost their power in a household of school-aged children. Things that worked with 4 children are a hot mess with 6. And the strategies I used with toddlers and preschoolers don’t quite work the same with middle schoolers (although some of them surprisingly do!).
Health bandwagon
At one point, I was fully on the healthy living bandwagon. We still resist antibiotics, flu shots, and other medications unless necessary, use coconut oil, coconut sugar, and coconut milk in our cooking, and look for ways to reduce our footprint. Still, I’ve had to come to a place where I don’t fit in with the healthy living community because I simply can’t do it all perfectly…and I’m not sure I even want to.
I can’t write posts that imply that working and homeschooling are easy to balance or that offer solutions in pretty packages to life’s problems because I just don’t believe they exist. While I am a positive person who prefers to find beauty every day, I need you to know that beauty is sometimes surrounded by chaos, dust, and imperfection.
I’m not quitting the blog; I’ve got some fun things to share with you, and I’m more excited about blogging than I’ve been in a long time. But if you’re looking for the “50 easy steps to a peaceful morning” or the “guaranteed solution to end sibling rivalry,” this is definitely not the right place.
If you’re looking for real, though…that I’ve got!
It’s taking me longer than I’d like to get these changes made, but this summer I’ll be rebranding Life Your Way….again. You see, in this season of life my head is full of working and homeschooling because those are the things that occupy my heart, and my home. I want to share hope for other work-at-homeschooling moms who are also trying to figure out how to juggle the chaos of work and family and homeschooling and life.
The content of the blog isn’t going to change drastically from what I’ve already been posting for the past year or so, but I want people to know what they’re getting as soon as the page loads, and I don’t think that’s happening right now.
Printables
I also have a list of printables and other products I’d like to create specifically for work-at-homeschooling moms, and I’m excited to do that (slowly but surely) in the coming months!
Some of you have been around since I was blogging about life with my three tinies, some since my focus was on organizing, some since our days with more than 20 different contributors. If I was any good at following rules, I’d pick one topic and stick with it. But blogging is a reflection of who I am, and if I’m going to be authentic, that’s going to change with the seasons of my life.
This is where I’m at now, and I hope you’ll stick around as I share more about the struggle and the joy of this crazy life!
