I signed off the last post on June 7, 2012 with these words:
2012. You crazy.
Can't say I love you, but I'll never forget you.
To that I say today:
How nice that now, unlike in the summer of 2012, we have the widespread use of emojis that can do the work of lettered language. That was easy!
Gentle reader, hello.
It's been years since we crossed paths. I hope that with everything that is happening, you and those you care for have stayed healthy and safe. I hope you're still inspired to ask, negotiate and reach for what should be yours. Now more than ever.
I never did write a negotiation book or turn the blog into a memoir, as I thought I might. But I recently started a new writing project. It's a newsletter this time, at butterandchaos.substack.com. I'm sending this last post out to invite you to check it out and subscribe if you want to get my occasional posts from there.
The lens and voice that may look familiar. The goal—to study something slowly and patiently, shift my outlook and behavior, and hope others are informed and maybe inspired somehow by what I discover and share—will be the same.
But other things have changed. You and I are both a little older since we last wrote/read words on this blog. I'm in a different place now, so instead of jaunty references to grad school and working in cafes until 3 a.m. and traveling the world, you'll get the dispatches of a woman struggling to understand and (please, oh please) whittle down or control her chaos. Is it her own doing? (Or... undoing?) Is the patriarchy to blame? Is "patriarchy" just a convenient scapegoat? Tune in to find out!
The cast of characters has expanded. Mr. A and I now have two mini askers-in-training. (Who am I kidding. Toddlers are the best askers ever. I could erase the whole blog and redirect it to this for a masterclass in calmly persistent asking. That's not my child, but I think she and my kids took the same workshop.)
It will not be daily. Maybe weekly. More like monthly, I expect.
The general topic is parenting. As I explain in my first post there:
It’s a continuation of my work at The Daily Asker, but with a different approach and a new purpose: to interrogate not the gender wage gap, but multiple motherhood and parenthood gaps.
While the focus is parenting, I'm going to add that I hope this next writing venture will extend beyond motherhood. Kind of like this blog was about more than asking. Or maybe I'm a self-absorbed parent now and everything I say, including Good morning and Gesundheit, is really about parenting?
Thank you for reading my words and, in some cases, writing back, all those years ago. And now. I hope we can pick up the conversation on the other side.
In closing:
To you, 2020, I hope this is the last time I write this:
You crazy.
Can't say I love you, but I'll never forget you.
And to you, gentle reader, thank you again for joining me on any part of my journey. I hope the rest of 2020 treats you well.
La Roxy
