Wednesday, May 18, 2011

An Introduction

Yeah yeah, I know - hardly original, right?!  But we all have to start somewhere so that's what this is - a start.

So as an introduction, where do I begin?  First a little about me.  I am Aly.  I have a baby called Zen (yes, really) who was born December 26, 2010 at just under an hour after midnight.  He weighed in at 10 lbs, 2 ozs and was 21.5" long.  Before he arrived, I marveled at how I would love him more than I love my cats.  I never realised how all-consuming and powerful that love would be.  He means everything to me in a way that I could never fully comprehend and even now I still struggle with the idea of how much I do love him.  Striving for Zen is definitely as much working hard for my little boy as it is to find peace and contentment in my life.

I decided to start this blog as an outlet, therapy and an exploration into life, myself and how I can strive to be happier and more content with it all.  I feel that in this day and age, in an everything-must-be-now generation with technology allowing people to do practically anything without leaving the comfort of their living room, it is amazing that anyone could be discontent.  But at the same time I believe that life has become more complicated - we have so much at our fingertips, so many opportunities to do so much that it is easy to become overwhelmed. For example, I currently have... *counts* ...14 tabs open on my browser and three different applications open on my laptop.  Why?  Well because it is a way for me to manage what I am doing, be it tracking my calorie intake, completing surveys, playing games or catching up on facebook.  Once I am done, I close the tab.  But some things are impossible to complete.  Games are ongoing, facebook is constantly updating.  I have three to four tabs open as a minimum at any one time.   Easy to understand, then, why I never feel like I can stop or like I have "finished" what I am doing.  I just have to check my newsfeed one more time, keep my nutrition tracker open so I know to update it later/in the morning/whenever.  And that's just the internet.

So why start a blog to add to all the things I am already trying to achieve?  Maybe because it will act as an outlet to try and philosophise (is that a word?) about this ongoing discontentment, negativity and struggle that I seem to feel being a new first-time mother who has the great fortune to stay at home with her baby.  I feel like I want so much (don't we all?) but have so little time and this sometimes leaves me wondering what the point of it all is.

Ultimately I want Zen to have a happy, fulfilling upbringing with motivated, positive parents who are successful.  And I want to achieve my own little piece of Zen by focusing on optimism and acceptance.