Moving House

Not in the literal, bricks and mortar sense, but I am moving in to a new home on the internet. I have been blogging here for over eight years but over the last couple of years I have posted less and less. Much has changed in my life since I first started this blog. Then I was a full time homeschooling mother; Helen was 10, Marie was 7 and I was pregnant with Rose. That was reflected in the focus of the blog, which was homeschooling, parenting and books (particularly children's books). Now my life is in a very different stage. The girls are 19, 15 and almost 8. It is several years since we stopped homeschooling and Helen has finished school. I am working full time and have rediscovered old historical interests and found new ones - I am spending a lot of time at work these days immersed in the First World War. Mothering looks very different when the children become teens and young adults. Music was always there as a background to my life but has become a bigger thing. I have got serious about eating well, exercising and generally living a healthier lifestyle. Although I still love books I read far less due to lack of time and after-work fuzz brain, and the girls all now read to themselves rather than me reading to them.

After drifting for a long time, reluctant to let go of a space I had loved, it suddenly feels time to move on. My hope is that a new start in a new blogging home will inspire me to write again. I have called the new blog Crazy Paving. The title jumped into my mind and when I looked for a definition I found this - "a form of paving, as for a path, made of slabs of stone of irregular shape fitted together". It seems a good fit for a life that is a mix of random enthusiasms and interests, constantly changing in the patterns they make with each other. Life is busy and often chaotic and I may not be able to post as often as I would like, but I intend to try to write regularly.

I have also decided to let go of the Bookworm name, because while it made sense as a pseudonym at the time I adopted it, I have lost my book habit. I am sad about it and hope I will be a bookworm again in the future, but for now a more realistic pseudonym would be Frazzled Mum, or Trombone Woman, or Manic Archivist, or ... on the whole, I think the best option is just to drop the pseudonym. As I am going to be posting on the new blog under my own name I am not going to link back here, mainly to protect the girls' privacy. Please do come and visit me at Crazy Paving. I would hate to leave my old friends behind in the house move.