Performance Review

I love my girls. They amaze me, amuse me, excite me and challenge me. But I honestly don't love much about being a mum. There have been many days when I have wondered how I will get through another day of the constant demands and the lack of personal time and quiet. I feel the burden of making good decisions and being strong in my discipline setting and facilitating healthy habit development of the girls. As a mum you just can't escape the awful truth that you are imperfect and that you can't create perfect kids. It's somewhat of a disappointment and an exhausting realisation.

The other thing about being a mum is that it's your job and yet it's not. You do actually work harder than any other job, emotionally, and physically, at least in my experience. You don't get paid much. You don't get to hang out with adults, at least not coherent non-sleep deprived ones anyway. You usually don't get a lunch break and in many ways you don't even get to clock-off. It just keeps on going. And you don't get a performance review, so you don't really know how you are going and where you are going. No one points out your strengths and no one helps you identify and address your weaknesses (except your own mum if you are so "lucky").

I have enjoyed the last few days of motherhood more than any others that I can remember over the last 5 years. It's not very clear why. It could be that the girls are aligning developmentally so that they can actually enjoy playing together, without me. It could be due to the fact that I have changed my work days so now I am not working on Mondays. But what I suspect it might be due to is blogging. Reading other mothers' blogs and thinking and writing my own is a bit like having a chat in the tearoom. Suddenly I not only feel more connected with the outside world, but my work as a mum has been granted some level of objectivity. Mums that blog are opening themselves up to an informal performance review. If you can see your role as mum more like a job then I think it helps you to hang on to yourself as yourself - a woman with skills and talents, dreams and ambitions, loves and hates. Knowing that what you write might be read by someone else in your "profession" allows a healthy self-consciousness and self-analysis that can lift you out of the isolation of home duties. It seems to be working for me.