The invisible woman

Firstly, thanks everybody for all the lovely comments on my last post! I’m glad you like Cedric and Celebi as much as I do!



I don’t want to moan (but sometimes maybe I should more?) and complain about how depressed I am. This blog is supposed to be about doing crafty stuff, not about me navel gazing and feeling sorry for myself. But sometimes there are too many thoughts whizzing around in my head and today I just want to get some of them out into the open to try and make sense of them.


At work, I often feel like the work I do is invisible, as am I. There are times when I can be actively involved in new IT developments, in thinking about what we do and how we should do it. And I love that bit. But too much of the time, I get dragged off to work on urgent tasks to ‘keep the lights on’ metaphorically speaking, to make sure everybody gets paid the right amount at the right time. And because payroll never falls over completely and disaster doesn’t strike, nobody ever notices the amount of effort it takes to get there.



And at home, I put all the love and effort I can into caring for my children, so that they can have the opportunity to do anything they choose with their lives. And when my DH comes home from work in a foul mood and short tempered with everybody, I do everything I can not to let his unkind words hurt us and make sure the children can stay happy and child-like.

When Iona has a bit of a tantrum or can’t talk about what’s bothering her for crying, it’s not that she’s doing it deliberately (well, not usually anyway) because she thinks that’s how to get what she wants, it’s just that she’s only 3 years old and still learning to talk to people about what she wants or likes or doesn’t like, and is still learning to negotiate. And staying calm and supportive and encouraging her to calm down and talk is not teaching her that crying is the answer.

And when Niamh does the silly things that toddlers do or won’t leave daddy alone with whatever he’s trying to do, it’s not that she’s deliberately misbehaving – she doesn’t know what misbehaving means yet. She just needs someone to be calm and supportive and to talk to her or distract her.

And getting cross with Alexander won’t encourage him to talk to you or share anything that’s bothering him and could end up completely alienating him.

And I feel like the effort I put in there is kind of invisible too as, to the children, that’s just what their mum is like, so it’s not worthy of anything special. And I can’t tell my DH these things as he’s almost impossible to have a conversation with these days.



But I love love love making things! Some days, it’s the one thing that keeps me going, that makes me feel alive. Usually there isn’t as much time as I’d like, but I can live with that. It’s the days when there isn’t any time at all that are hard.



And blogging seems to be the only way I can share my love of making things, but sometimes that feels invisible too. I think blogging culture has changed a bit over the years – people don’t comment as much as they used to – probably at least partly because to the sheer number of blogs out there! But also I think, because of feed readers which don’t present you with the opportunity to comment quite so readily – it’s just a few clicks more further away and just not so quick or convenient. And I know I’m especially bad at it these days too, for reasons that would take up a whole new blog post!



However, I would love it if you’d just stop by and say hello as you’re passing – then I won’t feel quite so invisible.