Since 2009, I’ve written over at carrieshare.com. However, when I started law school, I privatized a lot of the content over there. I was fond of sailor-esque language and “unprofessional” humor and did not want to jeopardize my burgeoning legal career.
However, when the pandemic hit I started writing again. I was now a married mom of two, knee deep in two-under-two territory, and we had just moved to a new city with no network.
I think I just needed someone to talk to that was not my immediate family, and that someone just happened to be the entire internet.
I was scrolling through some of that content recently and rediscovered this post which I’ve now reshared below. It’s eerily prescient in that it overlaps with my current situation as well as the song I just released about…[go figure] mom guilt.
Mom Guilt?
By CARRIESHARE | Published: JULY 28, 2020
Taylor Swift released a surprise album last week. It was written and recorded entirely during quarantine. It evokes the magic of youth, the magic of nature, and the magic of scaled down piano-based production.
It sounds like if twinkle lights evaporated off of the leaves in the morning, instead of dew drops.
I have wasted my life.
I did not use quarantine to channel something mystical and twinkly.
Envy is a very powerful emotion. Many of us don’t allow ourselves to feel it because it is “bad” so we just pretend that it’s not there. Or we camouflage it with disdain. However, envy will help you get very clear on what you want to do, so use it.
I think some moms feel guilty for not cutting their kids sandwiches into shapes. That is not my story. I feel guilty for not finding a way to drop an album while caring for two under two. And I’m very jealous of someone who did.
Yes I know she doesn’t have kids, and never mind that I’ve never dropped an album in my life. Details.
So, nevertheless she persisted. I ham-hacked this song on my thrift-store keyboard using the voice memo app on my iPhone, and a very cursory understanding of GarageBand. It’s a 45 second long instrumental and I wrote it in tribute to my beloved dog, the Puppy Lady, who passed a year ago this week.
It sounds like her.
And that was it. Literally, I got so jealous of Taylor Swift releasing an awesome stealth album that I just HAD to stop everything, write my own song and “release it” too.
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