Random thoughts

I looked up whether it’s possible to make a lot of money from writing for Medium and it’s really not—usually only a couple hundred bucks a month. From there, I followed links to how to make a lot of money as a writer, and it was all the same old pitching ideas and constant self-marketing that I hate and have never been able to do successfully.

It’s kind of ironic because I know that I’m a good writer. My pretty much immediate success in writing for Medium only surprises me a little (mostly in that I expected it to take longer to find success.) But the very first thing I ever wrote got published in a book that was a compilation of essays, and I’ve been on the masthead of a couple of different magazines. I do kinda know that I’m talented, though I still feel incredibly obnoxious in saying so.

And I probably indeed could be very financially successful if I wanted to turn it into my personal form of hustle culture. But despite that, I just have no interest in doing so. My writing voice is incredibly shy and gets scared away easily when I start trying to make a lot of money from it, especially when rejection enters the picture. I guess that is what it is…but it also makes me hopeful that I’ll be successful when I finally start writing books.

On a totally different note, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. My husband already got me roses and we’re going to drink mimosas and cook on the grill tomorrow. I’m painfully aware that this is the last Mother’s Day when all my kids will still be living at home.

I asked J today if I was really a good mother. (Maybe it’s common to wonder that? I actually have no idea if it is or not.) I was admittedly not a great mom for most of the kids’ elementary school years. To the same degree that I connect really well to teens, I just can’t connect to little kids very well. I’m so awkward about it. I found ways to delight in things my kids did when they were little, but for the most part, I just really didn’t know how to relate to them.

J asked me what I liked about each of the kids. I told him that I like Amy’s passion for causes and her dedication to the people she cares about. I like Adam for their gentle and sensitive personality and the way they genuinely care about wanting better lives for all of humanity. And I like Dylan for his tenacity and willingness to work hard to achieve goals that are important to him.

Then J told me that those are all character traits that they learned from me. I guess he’s right, but it still surprised me. Overall, I just often feel like J is the superior parent to such a large degree that it’s sometimes hard to see any good traits that the kids get from me.

But as he pointed out, there’s often a line outside of my office most nights after he goes to bed, in which the kids are waiting to talk to me. So I guess that’s something.

However, Amy is never one of the kids waiting to talk to me, in part because we’re on different schedules. I feel like I’m not as close to her as I could be…but she’s also 23 and I remember that I didn’t feel particularly close to my mom at her age, either. I just hope it won’t take her until she’s in her 40s to want a relationship with me, like it did with me and my mom.