{"id":5065,"date":"2011-04-09T16:31:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T21:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=3379"},"modified":"2025-08-24T11:47:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:47:54","slug":"mommy-why-dont-you-smile-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/mommy-why-dont-you-smile-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Mommy, why don\u2019t you smile anymore?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My son said this to me a couple of months ago and I\u2019ve been guilting over it ever since.<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s because I\u2019m stressed. My work life kind of exploded some time last summer when I decided to escape the (dying) industry I\u2019d been in for the previous seven years in favor of the formatting work that was falling on top of me. I kept thinking I could do less work for more money and spend time with my kids, but \u2026 That\u2019s not the way it worked out.<\/p>\n

Is it ever?<\/p>\n

In January, my career took a sharp upward turn when I was presented with an offer it\u2019s taken me four months to stop resisting. (Details later, when it\u2019s all finalized.) The deciding factor was time, because, in a totally unrelated twist, I was suddenly presented with a project I won\u2019t be able to resist at all.<\/p>\n

On the formatting front, I\u2019ve got a backlog of work and I\u2019m behind. I\u2019m stressed. My house, until two days ago, was a complete wreck (thank you GroupBuy for that cheap house deep-clean). I have to do my taxes. My kids are after me for attention (as is their right), but they\u2019re somehow easier to put off. I was sick most of December and February. Dude\u2019s been sick for the last two months. I have a book coming out on Easter (in case you hadn\u2019t heard). I\u2019m publishing a book for someone else this month. I have another huge project for another client. I\u2019m in charge of producing an important work from Peculiar Pages<\/a> coming out June 30 and working on edits for the Monsters & Mormons<\/em><\/a> anthology coming out in October. And we come around again to people who come to me for formatting their ebooks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exciting and nerve-wracking and stress-inducing and I haven\u2019t been able to sleep without some serious medication, which happens to give me a hangover. I like it. I like helping people self-publish. I feel \u2026 important. Like I\u2019m accomplishing<\/em> something with my meager little life. I love it.<\/p>\n

But \u2026<\/p>\n

\"Nighttime.\u201cMommy, why don\u2019t you smile anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n

So today I went to get the final item for the Magdalene<\/em> Easter swag basket (spirit gum, if you must know) and it\u2019s just down the street from Crown Center, across from which is a fountain.<\/p>\n

(Well, in Kansas City, you can\u2019t take two steps without falling into a fountain, so that\u2019s not saying anything.) It\u2019s 88F today, but the trees are still bare, which should give you an idea about how bizarre our weather has been.<\/p>\n

I decided that, in spite of my backlog of late projects, I\u2019d take the kids to lunch at Crown Center and then let them play in the fountain with about 40 other children. They didn\u2019t have bathing suits on, but who cares? This is an issue of being spawntaneous.<\/p>\n

They were happy. I was happy.<\/p>\n

And I smiled.<\/p>\n

ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/div>\n

We\u2019re gonna do stuff like this more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My son said this to me a couple of months ago and I\u2019ve been guilting over it ever since. Well, it\u2019s because I\u2019m stressed. My work life kind of exploded some time last summer when I decided to escape the (dying) industry I\u2019d been in for the previous seven years in favor of the formatting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[367,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-kansas-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5065"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18540,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions\/18540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}