When I started to feel like a dead woman walking at the beginning of 2012, I knew I had to take a break from Mayfair Mum. I loved spending my time on my blog and felt I had just produced some of my best posts to date. I was even getting nominated for awards and had a post picked up by the BBC! But then it suddenly became an effort. There was so much going on in my head it had become like white noise. I couldn’t find the words to write and when I did, it was half-hearted, apathetic and negative. I didn’t have the same energy for it I had before.

Mayfair Mum was and still is my second child, my creation. Like the Little Chap, Mayfair Dad had a hand in its creation, suggesting I start it when he could see my new role as a part-time Exec. Assistant wasn’t fulfilling my needs in quite the same way as my previous, now redundant role had. However, it was me that created and nurtured it, devoted time to it and watched with satisfaction and some pride as it grew.

Blogging has made me many new friends, brought me support and validation at a time when I was feeling a little bereft to be honest in the face of losing a demanding, satisfying, personally and intellectually challenging role that, until I had the Little Chap, quite literally was my life. At the time, blogging provided me with a chance to be creative, to market a new product and use my professional marketing and editing skills that were lying in a drawer somewhere in my mind, covered in a fine layer of dust. Watching its increasing success proved to me that I could still do it.

The problem is that blogging can seriously eat up your time if you’re not careful. Like anything you find yourself enjoying I suppose! There’s the thinking, writing, editing and marketing of it and the nature of blogging means that to be successful you have to get out there and read other people, link your blog to theirs by commenting on their work – and that’s really where it gets tricky. There are so many great bloggers out there, some have been professional writers, and others are amateurs discovering they have a great voice that others enjoy reading. It is a real web of like minded people and like any enormous web; it can be a bit sticky and hard to extricate yourself from!

But leaving it was the right thing to do. It gave me that extra ounce of energy I needed to ensure I was a good enough parent and partner while I recovered the energy and motivation I needed to carry on.

The good news is that I think I’ve found it. I’ve been itching to get back to the keyboard the whole time but I have also enjoyed the rest. I have had time to step back and see what it really means to me, to consider new ideas and give some thought as to how I want it to fit into my family life in future. I have had a bit of tweak here where it was needed but best of all I have had time to read a lot of other blogs.

I have really enjoyed spending time “out visiting” and last week I had a really good read of Ellen Arnison’s blog In A Bun Dance. I noticed she had written a book about Blogging for Happiness, a title which sounded appropriate to my situation so I ordered it from Amazon. I have only read the introduction so far but already she has inspired me to just take the plunge and get on with it. Having written a review of the book on my Goodreads account, promoted through Twitter, she got in touch and was really supportive:

See? How could I not want to have another go now?

I started tapping away just now thinking. Crikey! 100 words? 10 minutes? Can I do it? The answer is no, not today, but I might give it a try another day. So here’s the plan. There may be some weeks where I write one longer post or others where I write several shorter posts. I’ve got a few lined up. I’ve got a few new ideas. The place is a bit tidier than it has been of late and may even change a bit more.

All I can say for now though is I’m so excited to be back and it feels like I never left which has to be a good sign I think. Big thanks to those of you who have waited for me and especially to those of my readers who have kept in touch through Facebook and Twitter to ask how I’m doing – I can’t tell you how much that has helped.

So here’s to my new friends and writing again!

Mayfair Mum x

© Mayfair Mum, 2012