Dusting off the paint brushes – Maternity Leave is over.

First off, I need to apologise to all the moms, whose vlogs and blogs I have followed in the lead-up to my maternity leave. Of course they all said that they had to take a break, that baby just absorbed all their time, that they were simply too tired-out-of-their-minds to work. I listened, I politely gave them a mental nod and thought to myself “yeah nah, I’ll be okay”.

I sat on my desk at 9 months pregnant, belly between me and the paper, working on drawings. I had a sketchbook with me in the hospital. I sketched while breastfeeding (in the dead of night; yes, I am committed). I kept this up for a few months and then reality hit. It wasn’t working (surprise!) and I was right on course for another burn-out. So I took a break from drawing. Of course, my day job was just starting again, and I was slowly building up the hours there.

About a year after Junior was born I started to cautiously paint again, mainly shells (small and quick to finish). This worked well until the top of my desk in the lounge joined the “baby-reach-zone”. This one took us quite a while to solve, we tried physical barriers, moving my painting supplies to the very back, clearing the desk during daylight hours. It wasn’t working and I didn’t have much energy to fight. My daydreams of teaching Junior to respect “mom’s working time” and painting alongside him as a team building activity were also quickly shattered by the reality of a 30-second-attention span.

I bought him paint. He only coloured the water. I sketched while he was drawing. He snug up on me and added his very own touch to the page. We bought a new desk and I set up studio in our bedroom. He figured out how to open doors.

It has been almost 3 years since I kept to any seriously productive schedule, regularly updated social media and had a decent output in artwork. But I’m going to just let that go. My perfectionist self has been on extended leave since the first week with a newborn anyways.

It’s time to dust off the brushes and dig out the pencils - because someone just sent me a message.