Crazy writing moms et al

The Secret operates on wavelengths, and you pretty much attract stuff that’s on your frequency, so you want to be careful about where you’re standing. This week, I’m on a mommy wavelength, so mostly, mum’s the word.

I was browsing No wonder mom and saw two widgets for Bloggy Moms and Blogher. I spent the next half hour signing up for membership, newsletters and a bunch of other stuff. Then I started browsing sites by other moms, felt self-conscious, started getting down on myself, and wondered where the unfollow buttons were.

I veered away from mum sites to read Problogger. And today’s entry was written by … a mum. Simple Mom. She’s a mother of 3, has an awesome hubby, runs 5 blogs, and has a book coming out. I also found Pensieve, a gorgeous southern belle. Yes, they still make those.

With all these supermoms clouding my vision screen, it’s easy to feel like I’m coming up short.

Yesterday I had meetings, so I was running around a lot. It was cold when I left the house, and I’m out of clean t-shirts, so I felt semi-formal in my jeans and white blouse. Even with a hood lying over it, the collar peeped and made me feel school-girly again. At some points in the day, I felt important as I made game plans and signed contracts. At other times, I felt wobbly as I walked into my old workplace and found people dressed in suits and heels sneering at my shaggy purple hair.

The confidence resumed when I walked by a mirror bank window and liked what I saw, but sagged to subzero when I walked into a breast clinic. There was a hot flat girl who looked so sick she could barely stand, but her make-up and hair were flawless, and her man looked ready to cry as he helped her along. Maybe it was her brother. There was also this awesome-looking woman in jeans, boots, and head wrap. There should be a rule against looking good in hospital.

I know you’re not supposed to compare yourself with people, but sometimes it’s hard not to. I don’t know how long I’ll keep up with these mommy-site subscriptions, but I need to focus less on them and more on me. Otherwise I’ll spend all day reading blogs, feeling sad, and not writing at all.

Networks are a good thing. But when you spend all your time ooh-ing and aah-ing instead of doing and duh-ing, it can get a little pointless. It’s better to find a few key resources that are functional and useful, then stick with them. Plus, the trick is to value your own successes, do more reading offline – and surgically remove the envy gene. Let me know when someone figures out how to do that.

[Reading offline defies jealousy, because paper books don’t come with bios, galleries of professional photos, links to beautiful babies, and google-able entries of your days as a prom queen.]

I suppose this mommy frequency could be the Universe’s way of helping me meet women. I’m no good at girly relationships, and to tell you the truth, I find women scary. Maybe with babies to talk about we’ll backstab and catfight much less, especially since these women are waaaaaay over there with the internet between us. But for now, I need to review all these sites I’ve signed up for and see if I really want to stay on them, because there is such a thing as too much mommy-dom.

See you soonColdplay