It's me...

you thought I'd gone into a hole in the ground? or you hadn't noticed I wasn't here?

Anyway my so-called life has been grinding me down in a variety of directions, some good but just damn busy (planning a Brownie sleepover and some extra taster sessions in schools, starting playing in a new orchestra, knitting some Christmas presents), some just plain busy (most of my teaching for the year in the first few weeks of term, but leading to a knock-on effect of mental paralysis, fighting a few fires, and now a rather major administrative job for the end of term), but some a bit confidence-destroying.

In some areas it takes very little to knock my confidence and anyone else in academia will know that horrendous comments on your writing style are par for the course. In fact, one refreshing thing about my media experience was that (especially since it is usually face to face) people are usually quite relaxed and even flattering about your writing. It was suggested that I could do some freelance work and this week I finally submitted all my paperwork, and suggested a story - and felt very deflated not to get any response at all. I've been feeling like a bit of an underachiever anyway, and this was all it took to make me feel a bit despairing.

I've been bottling it up and Mr Spouse was having an irritating time with what I call "his chums" and he calls "the wastes of space" (the students on his course who he's been allocated to work on a project with) so I hadn't really talked about my work issues. But I thankfully got it off my chest yesterday and, though I was going to write about that earlier, we had another chat about another issue which I also feel i need to put down.

I am very fed up of our current contraceptive choice and am also feeling like I would like to have some hope still of maybe trying to have a biological child, even just to feel that door is not completely closed, so I suggested perhaps we could ditch the protection for the moment. He is very much not happy about that. Part of it is worrying about the adoption process and wether another miscarriage would disrupt it, what we'd do if I got pregnant again, would we put things on hold, or what. But I really had not realised how strongly he felt about my state of mind after the miscarriages - he says particularly after the last one.

We talked quite a bit today and it does bring back feelings for me quite strongly. I feel it was really, really horrible but I survived. But he says it may have been more frightening for him, outside, than for me (and of course he was very sad too). I am coming round to the idea that I will not have a much greater chance of getting pregnant this year/next year than in maybe 1-2 years' time when we have a baby in the house. And I think Mr Spouse is probably right that a loss then would make me much less sad, that I would have something to live for.

That last phrase sounds awful. I think you all, and he, know that I was never that bad. Perhaps something to get up in the morning for is more accurate. But although actually, I am doing OK, I'm going to stop typing now because I'm feeling a little sad.