It’s been two weeks since I’ve last posted, which I acknowledge is long enough in internet time that I may as well have fallen off the planet. I have a lot of obligations right now, and crafting posts for this thing sometimes takes an entire day (or more). I needed to re-prioritize and it happened that this fell down the list. I’d also read this post about mommy blogging hindering career process and I’ve been thinking long and hard about just deleting the archive and starting over and refocusing. But that’s another post altogether (which maybe I’ll get to later today if I’m feeling ambitious).

ANYWAY, the lack of updates hasn’t just been for nothing. It’s been kind of hectic around here in a bad way. My mother-in-law visited last week, which you can read all about at Hyphen because I literally don’t have it in me to write another word about the visit.

We also started potty training Hugga on Thursday while she’s been off school for the long weekend. I haven’t picked up a book on it or anything so I don’t know if there are any other techniques, but all of her preschool teachers suggested to take a weekend at home, make a big deal out of big girl underpants, and just ditch the diapers for good. Today is day 5 and it’s been going surprisingly well — zero accidents for the past two days, and absolutely no number 2 accidents since we started. (Future Hugga, please forgive me for blowing up your spot.)

We got her a damn car to celebrate her newfound big-girl status. We would’ve had to get it anyway since every single kid on our block has one and she completely loses her shit and refuses to come home whenever they have their cars out. It was nice to have an occasion to get it, but she has been wildin out and being stank every minute she isn’t outside in her car, even when it’s dark out and she’s laying in bed. It’s kind of driving me nuts.

Other things, too. A fight with the husband, rethinking the whole grad school thing, losing my focus with writing. I’m kind of in the middle of an existential crisis right now, but I’m trying to swim back to shore, I promise.

I’m just gonna come out and say it: it’s been a pretty crappy week. I caught Hugga’s cold, I got an expensive ass ticket I can’t afford to pay, Hugga has been a fucking intense two-year-old lately, it’s the day after pay day and I’m immediately broke as a joke, and while I did meet an important deadline, I’ve been completely unproductive both in my day job and in my writing. It’s been a stand still, move backwards, never-gonna-get-where-you-want-to-be type of week.

I also wrote a post for Hyphen that garnered the most comments I’ve ever gotten but many of them were negative (and modded out, mostly for being unintelligible). And I’m sure any troll will tell you that my bad week was just karmic retribution. By now I’m used to the trolls, but in retrospect I’m kind of disappointed I even wasted precious space and time writing about her, especially when seemingly no Asian American hip hop heads are actually checking for her anyway, and it totally killed my Atlantic buzz. I spent most of Monday watching the “Your Love” video and researching her career and lyrics, which is probably the wrongest, most depressing way to spend any Monday. So yeah, of course I was going to have a bad week.

Ugh, so F you, week. I will leave for Rock The Bells with this:

- Why does my kid fight with me so? When we get home from preschool, she starts acting like a total jerk to me, just lashing out for every little thing, but then every time I leave the room to let her have her moment, she goes, “I want my mommy!” If somebody could explain to me what is going on inside her head when this happens — does she suddenly hate me? is she trying to assert her independence but still wants me around? have I lost my sweet loving baby forever? — it’d probably be easier for me to deal with.

- On top of that, I have been sick since Sunday. I’ve been trying to flush this out of my system but so far nothing has been working. Hoping a miracle comes through tomorrow morning.

++ Going to Rock The Bells this weekend with Huz! I am going to get to see A Tribe Called Quest, Rakim, and Wu live for the first time!!!

— Found a damn traffic violation in my mailbox that occurred a couple of weeks ago. Upward of $500! I’ve never gotten a ticket before and this is the most expensive one I’ve seen ANYONE get. Going to court to contest it.

+ Oh well, we at least caught up with The Manila Machine for lunch today. Huz and I ordered a spam and egg slider, longanisa slider, beef tapa slider, lumpiang shanghai, and an ube cupcake and it was all so delicious! I fucking love living in this city.

? I volunteered to be a room parent for Hugga’s preschool. Actually, the cute teacher ambushed me (not really) at pickup the other day and asked if I could help, presumably because I’m one of the earlier pick-up moms and I’m always chatting the teachers up? Who knows. Anyway, yes, it’s happening. I think it’ll be cool, but I’m hoping I didn’t just put myself underwater with this.

I recently joined a writing accountability team for which I’ve committed to writing and submitting for publication two articles per month. I also landed a freelance gig for a national publication through a friend of mine. This is on top of all of the other obligations I have for the MFA program, my blogging gigs, and my day job. Did I mention I’m also a mom?

I have other plans too, ones that I’ve either had to put on the back burner or delegate to somebody else. While I’ve learned to loosen my grip over the past couple of weeks, I sometimes still have difficulty allowing myself to slow down and take my time. I’m overwhelmed by the things I want to do and this sense of urgency that everything needs to be accomplished now.

Sometimes I have to take a step back and really ask myself what the fuck I’m thinking to keep myself so obnoxiously busy. While I’ve managed to meet all of my deadlines without much strain or half-assing so far, life would be a hell of a lot easier if I scaled back down to just my job. I’d certainly be less stressed at times, but I don’t think I would be happy.

Spending time with my family and knowing I’m being a present parent makes me happy. And the best argument for parlaying this writing thing into a full-time career is that it enables me to spend more time with my kid. In that way, much of this is stress I can live with because it doesn’t take me away from my family or compound any guilt I have about not being around for Hugga. I’m not chasing my goals at the expense of more important things like my family and true happiness. But I could certainly stand to be less harried, to not chase all these things because I’m putting an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself but to go after my goals at a comfortable pace.

My shrink asked me other loaded questions a few weeks ago. What’s the bottom line on a day-to-day basis? What’s my purpose? Is all of this helping me to achieve that?

The bottom line is that I want to be happy. Does the act of writing make me happy? Not always. Sometimes while I’m writing, I truly hate it. But it helps me to make sense of things and makes me feel like I’m doing something meaningful with my time, like I’m leaving a legacy — a pressure I don’t want Hugga to have to shoulder, and that makes me happy.

I had a strange go-nowhere argument with a coworker the other day about how his wife, by virtue of being a woman, apparently was irresponsible with the family finances. This guy is hardcore Christian and tends to have sort of macho, sexist values, but all that bullshit aside, I still consider him a homie. His wife is literally the nicest person I have ever met in my life, and his kids love my kid. I just try to avoid conversations on religion or marriage or money or basically anything serious, because it always somehow boils down to righteousness or how women and men are fundamentally different, neither of which I believe in.

I have often wondered what it would be like to live with religion, sometimes even wished Huz and I could give Hugga those kinds of rituals. I was raised Catholic, went through all the Catholic ceremonies and did the church thing every Sunday, but never really believed in any profound way, and I still only half know what Easter is all about. We baptised Hugga at a Christian Universalist church to make my family happy, but that has been the extent of our experience. Like the author of this post, my family swore I’d become more conservative once I became a parent, but quite the opposite happened.

I wonder if life would be easier, if I might be the slightest bit happier if I had conviction. It’s not that I don’t believe in God — it’s that I can’t make myself have the kind of conviction (in anything, really) that religion requires. I think there is a god, but I can’t say that I know for sure, and I while I consider myself spiritual, I won’t lie and say that I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that what anybody else might believe is wrong.

And Christianity is just a club I can’t be a part of, and I realize this as my coworker talks about religion more and more. So much of his faith and so much about how his household is run is based on the gender divide — men are supposed to do this, women are supposed to be like that. Anything else is the Devil’s work. All Catholics are going to hell. He’s tried to get me to come to his church or his wife’s religious book club before, but I can’t pretend I believe in any of that.

I think one thing that really got to me was when he was trying to rap to me about Adam and Eve, about how if Eve never got curious, we all woulda been ballin in Eden right now. Not that I believe in the fall from grace, but I did read Paradise Lost, and I think the whole point is that if Eve never got curious, we wouldn’t exist right? Isn’t that the whole point of being alive and being human? Experiencing and questioning and exercising your free will? I’m just skeptical of any type of worship that discourages questioning or critical thinking, and it’s not an environment I want to expose my child to. I want her to ask questions, and I want her to know that sometimes there are no right or wrong answers. Questions are okay — we get into more trouble when we don’t ask them.

BUT what I can appreciate about religion and people who have religion is that they have a place to go at least every week with the same familiar and supportive faces. I find myself yearning for that same sense of community. I just realize we don’t have to go to a church or synagogue or mosque to get it.