Erin and the Purple Crayon: Bringing Our Blog to Life

Me: "I kinda missed the boat."

Ty: "There is no boat. Whenever you start is going to be the exact right time. You create the boat."

Right when he said this, all I pictured was that children's book, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and how he draws himself a little sailboat.

Harold created his own reality and when he found himself in a lurch, he simply drew what he wanted to happen next. Yes, I’m talking about a whimsical children’s book, but I can’t help wanting to be like Harold, drawing his desires into reality.

Why am I telling you this? Well, a few months ago, Ty and I dove into the deep abyss of launching a blog so we could finally begin our lifelong dream of writing together.

A Writer's Journey...

My soul has been craving this since I was a shy and insecure high schooler, writing poems and pouring my heart into a diary I dared not let a single soul read. I’ve tried my best to curb my craving to write, finding other careers that provide me with healthcare and a reliable income, but if I’m being completely honest, nothing has ever truly fulfilled my mind, heart and soul the way writing has. Even when I was a busy teacher, I most enjoyed teaching the art of writing, wanting nothing more than for my students to gain the same love the craft that I had.

When I birthed my first baby, I felt as though a creative passion was also born and I was overcome with intense emotions that I ached to put down on paper.

I started a family blog called Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness where I chronicled my new experiences. Of course, I shared this blog with no one but the grandparents, but I found that the act of writing about this new motherhood role I birthed into really helped me process and preserve it.

Around that time, I also felt giddy to be asked to do some freelance writing for a website about how to make “green” choices as a new parent (even though I was still not quite sure how to do that myself). There were several of these small writing opportunities that always seemed to show up on my path. Unfortunately, I kept ignoring them instead of seeing them for what they were - a call to come back to the creative fold. A possible roadmap to the life I could have lived if I kept following those not-so-subtle signs the universe was showing me.

But, as we all have learned, becoming a parent brings with it an urgent responsibility to provide for your child, which often means saying YES to reliability and NO to wistful dreaming.

When we finally had the good fortune of getting job offers back home in Santa Barbara, I found myself as a new mother with no mom friends and no idea how to raise a kid in the place I had only experienced as a naive college kid who partied more than I studied and had a very go-with-the-flow way of life.

The best way to explain mine and Ty’s life before we became parents was “que sera, sera” or “Whatever will be, will be.”

I loved that way of life, but found parenting as young professionals in Santa Barbara to require a different life approach.

Decision Point

I had already quit my elementary school classroom teaching job after my second baby was born since my income was not enough to pay for two kids in childcare, so I needed a flexible job that paid decently and allowed me to be home most the week.

So, I had the idea to begin a website called “Santa Barbara Baby Guide” where I would write about all things parent related that Santa Barbara had to offer. I would highlight stores, shops, parks, beaches, and simple ideas for moms on a very minimal income (aka: Ty and me) to do with their Santa Barbara babies.

Since I am like a caveman when it comes to most technology, I haphazardly figured out how to make a website and begin creating the most basic blog before I even knew what the word blog was.

At the very moment I allowed my truest passion spark to life, a different kind of dream job seemed to fall directly into my lap.

I got a call that UCSB's Teacher Education Program was looking for a new supervisor/lecturer to work with student teachers. My name was brought up. They asked if I was interested. I was.

I was now torn between following my spark of joy or an amazing opportunity in the education world.

I vividly remember sitting outside on a hot August night, rocking a colicky baby girl back to sleep as I contemplated which path I would take. The Santa Barbara Baby Guide path would be unpredictable and I couldn’t imagine how it would provide for my family financially while the other, a Supervision/Lecturer position at the coveted UCSB Teacher Education Program, was reliable and good wholesome work. A real job, so to speak.

What I really wanted was to maximize time home with my babies, but I knew Ty and I would struggle to survive on one-income. I was trying hard to create a life where I could find work that fueled my passion and would not take me away from my babies too much. This is a quandary nearly every mother faces and it is not lost on me that I am quite privileged to have a choice in the matter at all.

Once again, I said farewell to my little website and that spark of fire for writing grew fainter, but didn't quite go out. I never ended up making the site public because I wanted it to be “perfect," which it never could be, both because perfection is a myth and because I had no brain power left after chasing an overactive toddler around while growing another little Vernon inside of me. However, I was still very proud of what I’d created and still believe strongly that it would have connected with other parents in Santa Barbara. I've since learned that things will never be perfect. You have to put them out them anyway.

Another Chance...

A few months later, a friend of mine reached out to me asking if I wanted to launch a website called Central Coast Mama with her. She was not yet a mama but I thought her idea was brilliant and exactly the kind of thing I wanted to be part of. Our mission was to be a lifestyle site for moms along the central coast of California where we could celebrate, collaborate, and highlight other moms. It was awesome. We did “Mama Spotlights” where we’d interview Mompreneuers and I’d get to combine my love for writing with my love for photography.

I met so many incredible women in our community and felt honored to be on the receiving end of so many inspiring stories these moms had to tell. It felt right and I felt so fulfilled by so much of this work. Nora Estrada and I had the right combination of passion and grit so I have no doubt this could have been something great if we were able to truly pour ourselves into it the way any new business requires of you. Unfortunately, the very thing we tried to highlight, Motherhood, ended up being our demise.

I was struggling to keep up with the insane demands of working for UCSB for the Teacher Education Program and raising two small children of my own. With no family in town to help us, childcare was too expensive to justify taking the necessary time it would take to keep Central Coast Mama progressing the way it deserved. Ty and I were still broke college graduates who lived on the fumes of our dreams and a tightly fixed monthly income that did not allow for any extra expenses. Our dreams were BIG but our reality kept crushing them with all the typical boring adulting stuff. The grocery bill grew, the car needed new tires, the cost of preschool was exorbitant, and we were trying to save up our pennies to buy a home in a post-recession market that we knew wouldn’t last.

Nora and I tried our best to keep Central Coast Mama alive, but we both had day jobs we needed to keep and seven kids between the two of us we needed to literally keep alive, so when something had to go, our beloved website was the thing that fell off the cliff.

I feel so fortunate to have had that experience though, as it only amplified my purpose to lift other women up and grew my belief that every single one of us has a story to tell!

And I wanted to tell mine.

Even though the timing in my life seemed to continuously force me to make the safe, smart choice, the powerful desire to run with wild abandon towards the unpaved unpredictable path of being a writer never left me.

Then one day, a year turned into ten years and my own youthfulness was replaced with gray hairs. I’m not even joking when I say that I looked in the mirror one day and no longer saw the woman I thought I was. Suddenly, all those ideas I had to write about mothering babies and toddlers seemed irrelevant because I was no longer in that phase of life.

Well, let’s be honest. Sleep deprivation mixed with anxiety made my brain mush to the point where I could no longer remember the early days of motherhood anymore! I joke with Ty that I think I have early onset Alzheimer's, but I’m not really joking! My memory is shit, so I’d better get all my writing done now while I still have some of it in tact!

I told myself it was too late, I already missed all my points of entry into the world of writing.

I also worried that I had nothing more to share with the world that hadn’t been already shared by someone else. The blogging world is drenched in abundance now and saturated with content.

What’s even crazier is the fact that I sit here tonight, on a Monday in early August, facing the exact same decision I did nearly a decade ago. I told Ty it feels like I’m in the Twilight Zone.

Decision Point, Revisited...

Just as I finally ventured onto the unpaved path of being a writer, I got a call from my prior boss at the Teacher Education Program asking if I’d please come back to supervise again this school year. I mean, talk about ridiculous timing! I was just feeling comfortable on this new road I had so enthusiastically embarked upon and already life was interfering with a detour. The irony of this is that it is literally the same detour that tantalized me in the past.

I guess I’ve come full circle, but I’d really like to get off this hamster wheel once and for all. I know what I want to do, I know the path my heart wants to lead me on. But I don’t know if it would be logical or wise financially to keep on this path.

In Pursuit of Big Magic...

This past summer, right after Ty had surgery to remove the tumor in his liver, he and I went on a roadtrip to meet up with our children, who’d spent the week at the grandparents house. We were both feeling extremely motivated and enlightened by our current situation, which is a strange outcome of facing cancer face-to-face, and we spent our time together dreaming about finally writing our book and launching our website. As we drove for hours through the rolling hills of central California, we listened to the book, Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

It is quite honestly one of the best books I’ve listened to on Audible, and I loved sharing the experience with my dear sweet husband.

Ty and I have been dreaming Big Magic together since we first began dating, and our most treasured conversations about our dreams for our future have happened on that same exact stretch of highway when we were just a young dating couple, falling deeply in love with each other.

One of my favorite messages from Elizabeth Gilbert is this:

"Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart."

Ironically, as I beat myself up over this impending decision I must make about following my own Big Magic vs. saying yes to the safe road, I just happened to put my airpods in and heard this exact message from Elizabeth Gilbert coming through loud and clear.

“I held onto those other sources of income for so long because I never wanted to burden my writing by paying for my life. So many people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.”

Bringing Our Blog to Life

For me, writing is my art form and I finally found the courage to bring it forth into my daily life. I also refuse to burden my writing by expecting too much from it. So, here I am, back where I was a decade ago but with much more wisdom and experience, dedicating myself to my creativity and trusting that it can survive another season of sitting alongside responsibility.

I have a responsibility to my family and to myself, and God willing, I won’t let either of them down.

Is Both a Choice? An Update, One Month Later...

I am returning to this draft of a blog post one month later and it's so interesting to read it from my current perspective! I did end up saying yes to supervising a few Student Teachers this fall for my UCSB position and I so far do not regret it. It has allowed me to stabilize my family's finances during this unpredictable time and it has also taken the burden off my writing so I can simply write from my heart and not from a place of it needing to provide income.

I've also been forced to be very intentional with my time since I absolutely refuse to give up on my writing. Time management is not a skill I am blessed with and is actually one of my main ADHD struggles, but I absolutely refuse to give up on my writing so I really have given myself no choice but to figure out how to prioritize my days and weeks.

Failure is simply not an option for me.

I've become swift at deciding what I can commit to each week because I suddenly have a very clear sense of my own values. My number one value is FREEDOM and it's broken down into two parts:

Part One

Part One is a commitment to my family and to have the freedom and flexibility to be both physically and emotionally available to my children and to my husband.

This often means saying no to other people, and to my friends dismay, this also often means I do not respond to texts or emails in a timely manner. If I am emotionally or physically taxed out because my free time went to my children or husband that day, chances may be slim that I have the bandwidth to be available for others. It sucks, and it does make me out to be a crappy friend sometimes, but this is the truth of where I am in life right now and I can only hope that those friends who really love and know me will understand and forgive me, despite this rudeness I currently show them. I will return back someday, when my values systems can shift again, but for now, I need to stay focused on my two FREEDOM values in order to stay sane!

Part Two

Part Two is a commitment to building a life of freedom for ME.

This means that I am intentional about staying true to my own goals and ensuring I have the freedom of time to do that. Again, this means I have to say no to some things I would actually love to do so that I can say yes to building a life of freedom I so desperately crave. This has meant saying YES to staying on at UCSB to continue doing work that serves my community (training future teachers) and also saying YES to writing on our family website and working towards publishing my first book. The downside to this commitment to myself has been that I've had to say no to anything "extra" right now.

I am in the learning process of how to live a purpose driven life, and I've been ravenously consuming webinars and podcasts that claim to help me do just that. I have a long way to go until I am even remotely close to achieving this goal, but by narrowing my values down to two core elements I feel that my journey towards a purpose driven life has begun!

Life told me it was too late to dare to dream, but with the encouragement from loved ones and a strong nudge from God, I hopped in the boat and began sailing. I have no idea what lies ahead, but I am hoping that this new sense of direction I have will guide me to where I need to be.