Hey...I'm back.

Wow.  I've been gone so long that I don't quite know what to do with myself.

It feels almost like the first time I blogged.

Come to think of it, that was three years ago this month.

I missed my own three-year blogiversary.

In the last three years things have changed a lot.  Isn't that a minor understatement?

I started blogging in the second month of unemployment, while I was casting about for something to keep me sane.

Now?  I've got more going on to keep me challenged than I can shake a stick at.

But I'm still not fully employed.  It drove me heart-poundingly, mind-numbingly crazy not to be employed during that first year.  Things are still not much better in this area; the only white collar jobs are in healthcare.  Believe me when I say that's the last place you'd want to see me; would you really, really want your life in my hands? 

Time and distance have a way of changing one's perspective, though.  I look at my status this way: it's a rare gift, one that many people will never have.  I've been able to spend beaucoup time planning and building this new home.  I've learned so damned much from blogging, from the home building process, from all the time I've spent in political activism.  It's an education that I'd have to pay several years' salary to acquire.  Isn't it great how that worked out?  Only an investment of time and tight budget required.

The kids are fine with it, too; my son would still like me to have an office job so that he can attend the after-school program.  I think he'd also like me to have better firewalls between my various roles.  Me too, but that's the nature of the situation, the nature of being a mom these days.  We go with the flow, shift gears at a moment's notice.  I'm cooking dinner while I'm networking about political strategy; I'm ironing shirts while on a conference call with an activist group; I'm flipping between research on kid's curriculum and part-time contract work.  I'm doing wash as I type this.

I suppose I could label that the biggest single change that's happened in three years' blogging time.  I've stretched my identity even further, encompassing so much more than I was when I left my full-time job.  I was only a project manager and a mother. 

Now I'm a writer, a blogger.  A business owner/operator.  General contractor.  Political strategist and activist.  Elected party official.  Still a project manager.  And always a wife and a mother.

I'd still like to be an employee some day.  But I think I can wait a bit longer without going bonkers.

What's changed in the last month in your world?

What's changed over the last three years from your point of view?

Do tell.

9:31:04 AM    comment []