Happy New Year!

Shhhhh.

If I am very very quiet, no one will notice I am in here all by myself.  Heck, who am I kidding?  I abandoned blogging over a year ago when I returned to work full time.  I used to love having stories to tell and photos to share about my life.

But then I took a new career path.  Instead of working 15 hours a week as a professor, I now work 50 hours a week at the same college.  What do I do?  Well, if it is summer time, I am the high school principal to students from 22 local high schools that take classes on one of our four campuses.  If it is the school year, I manage classes that let kids from those same schools earn both college and high school credit.  Dual credit classes, they are called.  

I love every crazy second of it.  My college serves a really diverse population including inner city kids from Aurora (second largest city in Ill) to small country high schools with less than 20 graduates a year.  In between are suburbs both comfortable and struggling.  Every day brings a new challenge and I have not had a single day of boredom.

This weekend I scrapped a little bit about my feelings as part of a challenge at Scrapbooking From The Inside Out.  The December kit (my first!) asked us to focus on Release.  I decided to let go of my mommy guilt--it definitely needed released!

Supplies:  Cardstock: American Crafts, Paper: American Crafts, Crate Paper, Alphabet: Lilly Bee, American Crafts, Font: Distressed Typewriter, Die Cuts: BasicGrey, Stickers: Jillibean Soup, Crate Paper, Other: stitching.

Journaling:  Something happens when you become a mom. You leave the hospital with a tiny bundle of joy and a kernel of mom guilt. Both will grow faster than you thought possible. The questions can plague you. Are you doing too much of this? Not enough of that? 

For me, the biggest question was should I return to work full time? When offered the perfect job--one that would challenge me using all of my education and experience--I hesitated. My kids were 9 and 12, not babies but not completely ready to go. 

Questions like "were they ready for me to be gone 50 hours a week?" and "what would I miss?" warred with the idea that it would be good for them to see me as a successful woman with value outside of the home.

I will be back.  I remembered that I really like sharing the twists and turns of my life.