Observation Mommy – Katie L. Carroll

You would think with so many snow days that it would feel like a lazy time of year. But snow days means days with no baby-sitting and missed school for The Boy, which means less work time for me. So all these “lazy” snow days have me feeling behind on my work. With quite a few workshop opportunities booked for the first half of the year, it’s got me feeling a bit frantic.

Plus, February has to be my absolute least favorite month of the year when I tend to be low on both energy and good spirits. So that always takes its toll on me this time of year. I don’t even have any place to ground myself right now and I’m itching to get my feet on some grass…even in this crazy cold. (Normal high this time of year is around 40 degrees. This year our warm days have been in the low 20s.)

I have many ideas for thoughtful blog posts, but they take more time and brain energy than I have right now, so unfortunately thoughtful blog posts have taken a back seat for now. Lucky for all you blog readers, I’ve had some wonderful guest posts to share with you all to make up for my lack of ones. Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll find the time and energy for some good blog content soon.

In the meantime, here are some other places where you can find me on the web. I have lots of short posts with my thoughts, trials, and triumphs as a mother on Tumblr called Observation Mommy. You don’t have to be on Tumblr to check these out.

Lightning Quick Reads is a great short story blog I’ve been contributing to. Each month there is a different theme and each author posts once a month. My day is the 11th of the month and throughout the year I’ll be posting a series of related stories called “Tale From the Field” about a women’s high school soccer team. Each post is form a different players point of view, and I’m really enjoying tapping into my own memories of when I played competitive soccer. January’s was Captain Megan with a goals theme, and February’s was Addison in Love? with a, wait for it…love theme.

And if you’re local, the New Haven, CT launch party for The Great CT Caper has been rescheduled for Wednesday, March 25th from 4-6 p.m. It’s at the Yale Peabody Museum and all first floor exhibits will be open, including the Great Hall of Dinosaurs! Parents, kids, educators, librarians…everyone is welcome to come, and it’s free. Sign up here!

The Observation Desk (which you may not know is the official name of my blog) has changed a lot since I first started it back in May of 2008. First of all, I was still on blogger back then and it was more of a personal journal than anything else. I wasn’t always consistent on posting either.

Since I moved to a full WordPress site in June of 2012, the Observation Desk has definitely moved in the direction of being a place for other writers to come and share their thoughts and experiences in addition to my personal journal. I try to keep a nice balance of the two with one of my posts early in the week and one guest post later in the week. I’ve really enjoyed my couple of blog series: Confessions of an Author and Females in YA.

Even after six years of blogging, I’m never sure how personal to get on my posts, but I’ve found that some of my most personal posts have gotten the most response (in both number of hits and in comments). Notably my post called “How Does a Mother’s Love Grow?”, which voiced my fears about having a second child, was terrifying to publish and so uplifting when people wrote nice messages to me in response. And, of course, any time I’ve had big writing news, you all have always responded so kindly to those posts.

So what’s with all this reflection about the blog and when am I going to finally get to the point of the new writing venture that this post title so directly mentions? (Whenever I ramble in a blog post, I always think about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and how Holden had that speaking class and yelling out “digression” whenever someone got off topic.) Anyway, enough digressing…to the point…

Since becoming a mother, I find I have the urge to write about it. Often just little things come to me during the day. And these thoughts feel significant to me and I feel the need to record them. But I’m not much for keeping a physical journal and writing by hand, well, bothers my hand. But this blog doesn’t feel like the right place for these little thoughts either. It’s not that I don’t mind talking about being a mom here (you all know I do that here), but I save my more long-winded thoughts for here.

The more I thought about my desire, which has quickly become a need, to express these little things, the more I realized I needed an easy and quick way to do it. Because I want to do it frequently when the mood strikes and I don’t always want to have to haul out my laptop because, frankly, some days there just isn’t time for that. And when I do haul out my laptop, I want to be able to write and not have to take all my little thoughts and record them.

“Digression!” No, really, all this blabbering is on topic, I swear. So I’ve decided that Tumblr is a good place for these motherly thoughts. I plan on keeping them short, almost poetic in nature. No need for full sentences or even much coherence (which is in short supply when you have little ones). I chose the Tumblr blogging format because it’s well suited for snippets and I think it will be easy to access and update from my phone (which will be key in me posting often on it). I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post daily, but maybe almost daily…we’ll see how it goes.

I’m calling it Observation Mommy and the link is http://katielcarroll.tumblr.com/. My first post will be on Wednesday because that’s The Boy’s third birthday and I thought this was a good milestone to start on. I hope some of you will check it out and visit frequently. Of course I’ll still be posting some motherly thoughts, and the adorableness that is pictures of my sons, on occasion here. But I think this new blog will satisfy that craving I’ve had for more writing about parenthood and kids in a manageable way.

Stayed tuned for more writerly news coming soon as well. I’ve got a fun new collaborative project I’m involved in and will announce that soon. Yay! Any good news for you all?