How can I change the world and still be home in time to cook tea?

It’s early, well earlyish for a school holiday; yet again I’m not sleeping well, too many thoughts keeping my mind on overdrive.

I get up, make a cup of tea and grab my laptop. It’s been a while since I sat in bed and wrote a blog post.

One sentence, that’s all I have time to type before a child wanders in and climbs beneath the covers with me. Why can’t he sleep in like his big brother? Crossly I click and close every tab I’ve opened and slide the laptop under the bed.

I should be grateful that my thirteen year old still wants a cuddle with his mum. My close physical contact is limited these days and he is the one person who I can legitimately tickle on the tummy.

But it just serves as a reminder that I am first and foremost a mum and a single mum at that!

I’ve never had a proper career; to be honest I’ve never had a proper job title.

In the past I would quite happily fill out forms with my occupation as House Wife. 

I was a wife – I’d been chosen, after years of never even having a boy kiss me I was delighted by my change of status.

But the W word was superseded long ago now by another harsher W word.

The Mother label is all I have left, it’s not quite enough to fill my every waking minute but I don’t know what else to do?

I keep thinking something will happen… by which I mean I keep hoping Prince Charming will turn up and sweep me off my feet. Every time I go somewhere new I’m looking, waiting, wondering. As ever I am the incurable romantic who still believes in Happy Ever Afters.

Remember that bubbling excitement of waiting the other week?

Foolish fairydust most of it. Now I have to face reality get off my backside and DO something to make the changes happen.

The thing is, although I’m not ready to share it here yet, I kind of know what it is and I am making as many excuses as I can to not follow it through.

There’s a mountain looming before me too difficult to climb, I’m not prepared, certainly not good enough for the task ahead and I have to be back by 3pm to pick the kids up from school.

I bought this post card years ago and stuck it on the fridge never realising all these years later it would still hold true.

OK so the boys don’t need me in quite the same way, it has changed a lot over the last sixteen years, especially in the last two and a bit when I’ve taken on the full time role of single parent.

In some ways being a parent is my comfort zone, I’m not always good at it, there are times I wish I could go back to the beginning and start again but most of the time I do alright and it’s all I really know how to do.

Can I really go out and change the world? 

Can I make a difference?

But what worries me the most is will this potential new venture be something else I start and never finish like so many other plans and projects of the past?

There’s one thing about being a mum – you can never give it up when you get bored, when things get tough. 

Whatever happens those two special boys will always be my number one priority!