I’m sitting at my Mother-in-law’s house in Minnesota where I will greet 2013, with 10lbs of cheesy potatoes tucked inside my belly. I will tell strangers that it is a child. But we all know the truth: There is no such thing as pregnancy cravings, women just use that as an excuse to eat more than their socially appropriate ration of ham.

2012 has been a crazy wonderful year. I gave up shopping for pants. I saw my movie on the big screen. I saw my name on the HuffPo and my face on a billboard. I bombed on the radio. I flew. We fell. Got up, and tried again. 2013 scares me. Every new year scares me. But especially this year, because I quit my job just to take the chance at doing more of what I love.

And now, the future looks like a yawning cavern of failure and pajama jeans. And my brother-in-law has done his best to remind me that I no longer bringing in an income, which is really helpful and charming.  All brother-in-laws should come with a bottle of Xanax taped to their butts.

I don’t make resolutions. I don’t believe in them. Instead, if you want to do something, you do it. Right now. Right then.  So, for me this is the year of the right this second. And I hope for you it is a good one.

Here are my “best” posts of 2012, I realize this is a narcissistic thing to do. So, I made it less narcissistic by having them be my “most shared” posts of 2012. But really, that’s still narcissistic, but so is blogging. So, you take the good, you take the bad, dah, dah, dah, daaaah, the facts of life.* I would do my favorite pictures, but let’s be honest, without the filters of Instagram, I am nothing.

Also, this are not in a particular order. I hope your OCD hates me right now.

*I never saw that show because I was home schooled, but I assume that’s how the song goes.

On Tragedy and Parenting:

 

“Our lives are always petering on the edge of tragedy. You can do everything correctly and still wake up one day to learn that your son is in jail. Your daughter has been molested. Your sister is on drugs.”

Note: This post references a piece that was due to be published in the NYT, but got held up by lawyers. I still anticipate it making an appearance in 2013.

A Trophy Wife:

 

“Scared of failing. Scared of losing myself. Scared of waking up in a Mickey Mouse shirt and Lee jeans, driving a minivan and regretting all that writing that I was going to do.”

Sexy Moms in Bikini’s:

 

“…White Cliffs of Fat or Fat Ridge, which is that shelf of fat that clings to my lower stomach announcing to everyone that this lady still eats cake like she’s the growing 16-year-old boy she never was.”

Naming Your Child Kixx McGee Purple Acer Robot Smith

 

“Like if we aren’t all Avas and Jaydens, somehow the core of our existence is undermined and the Mayans were right and we’re all going to be Left Behind because Jesus hates that you named your baby Bear Blu Cheese.”

No Pants 2012: What I’ve Learned About Fashion

 

“But I think I thought, somehow the financial freedom and the freedom from consumerism would make me emerge some sort of Dave-Ramsey-Anna-Wintourish butterfly. Cheap. Fancy. Not going to happen.”

Thirty

 

“The past five years have been a slow reveal that I am not all that, that the world does not spin on it’s axis around me. The sun doesn’t rise and fall with my triumphs and failures.”

When You Are in The Apocalypse

 

““Well, I haven’t heard about it on the news,” she answered cautiously. Like she’d heard the old “my town is being flooded” excuse one too many times.”

In This Moment

 

“My fear grips me at night, when I lay down and the nausea subsides and I feel normal again and I think. What if my child is already gone? What if there is no heartbeat? Or there is, and then later, there isn’t?”

Why I Need a Bridle

 

“So, I barreled forward. I wrote. I got jobs. I wrote some more. I did what I loved. And then one day, I looked around and realized I was  pregnant and living in Iowa.

Somewhere, Gloria Steinem was shaking her head in shame.”

Everybody Running

 

“And just in case, I asked for heaven for everyone I knew and all the ones I didn’t. When I did rebel, I joined the debate team and read the Communist Manifesto. It was the most I could muster at 16.”

That’s Not What Girl’s Do

 

“You don’t draw definitions around gender, you draw definitions around people. But they’re all so little and it’s too big, even for me.”

One Year

 

“Things I won’t tell you, because no one needs to know how many times I pooped, the exact number of bad puns I tried to make to while away the 16 hours of labor, or how many suppositories it took to stop the bleeding. But you do need to know that holding Ellis that first time I felt so exhausted, so spent and so completely complete.”

When people ask me what I do, I usually lie and say “accountant” because there is never any follow up questions for that.  Maybe a poorly worded math joke. But nothing else. It’s very underwhelming. (Sorry accountants, but you know it’s true.) Yet, sometimes I make the mistake of telling the truth…”Oh, uh, I write and do social media. I work from home.”

And this is the response. “Ohhh, how nice! You can spend time with your kid and work!”

Before Ellis was born a woman actually said, ‘That’s the perfect career for a mother, you should have kids soon.” But that was at a church where they hung banners with felt lambs bleeding felt blood out of their felt necks, so you can’t really fault her for being crazy. It’s all the felt gore.

“Yeah, it’s awesome!” I say. Because no one wants to hear you whine about working in your pajamas all day.  Fortunately, due to sexism and Midwestern codes of ethics, now that I’ve spawned most people assume I either do something boring or stay at home. No one asks. Thanks, sexism!

Perhaps because I’ve been working at home for four years, I’m always surprised when people are all work from home is the dream! Because you know what I miss? Wasting time at work by sneaking over to my friend’s desk and talking about how the receptionist smelled. I mean, I kind of do that, but it’s on Twitter and instead of the receptionist, I complain about myself.

Over on Forbes, Susannah Breslin mythbusted working from home and I want to contradict her good (and vastly superior) work with my own myths and the truths behind them.

Myth #1. I wear pajamas all day

Truth: Some days, but those are the bad days. The dark days. The days where if I actually got a paid sick day, I’d stay home and vomit mucus into the toilet. Most days, I’m up at 5am to workout or get some work in, then into the shower by 6:30 and wearing clothes by 6:35am. (What? I take fast showers because I grew up one of 8 kids and I wasn’t the “pretty” sister).

Myth #2: You have balance.

Truth: Ahahahahaha! *wipes tear from eye* That’s a good one. Look, let me just set one thing straight. No matter what you do, you don’t have balance. SAHMs need more time for themselves. Working moms need more time with their kids. And WAHMs? We just need prozac. Some days, when my sitter is gone and I have to wing it with Ellis, I want to hunt down the lady who told me this was the “perfect situation” and stab her. Because guess who likes to come over to the computer and slam the lid down while I am working and say “all done now!” and lose all my work? Or demand Elmo videos? No, not the Illuminati. Good guess though.

Myth#3: You secretly want a full time job, you just can’t find one. 

Truth: I do not, but thanks for calling and wasting my time recruiter. No, it’s great that you have this number! Oh, will I send you some of my contacts who might want the job? Yes, I’d love to do your work for you.

Every month, I get phone calls from recruiters trying to convince me that I want a full time job. I even had someone call me and offer me a full time job after hearing a radio interview and assuming that I was a “blogger looking for work.” Truth: I’m a working blogger. And I’m happy.  HAPPY! I will remind myself of this when I am up tonight until midnight getting caught up on work. And by “remind myself” I mean: drink.

And no, I won’t tell you what I earn. But I will tell you this, I make more working from home as a freelancer/permalancer than I did working full time for a marketing company. But I live in Iowa, the jobs are few but the corn is plenty.

Myth #4: I am in it for the fame.

Truth: Yes, I am!! I’m going to be so famous. I can’t wait. And then I’ll make you, my subjects, all stack up into a pile so I can use you as a human throne Yertle-the-Turtle style.

No. I am my own business. A walking factory of made-in-America awesome. When you like Lyz Lenz on Facebook (CLICK CLICK CLIIIIICK!), you aren’t soothing my ego (okay, maybe some) actually you’re helping me build awareness for the work I do, for which this blog acts as a platform.  Part of they way I get work is by showing people what I do for myself on a regular basis. And this blog is just that. And I think it’s a necessary part of any online life. It’s my resume, where I talk about not-wearing pants and post pictures of my chubby baby. So, in sum: Best resume ever? Or maybe the people who hire me just don’t know how to Google things.

But I do want to echo what Susannah Breslin wrote:

“One of the “scary” things about working from home is that you can’t coast. How hard you work dictates the size of your paycheck. This is undeniable, unavoidable, irrefutable. You will find this empowering or paralyzing, motivating or debilitating, inspiring or overwhelming.”

For me, most days it’s everything. I’ll do something that promotes me and then spend weeks feeling like a ho-bot and wailing to Dave, “I just shamelessly pimped myself!” And he’s all, “I don’t think a pimp is a pimp if he is pimping himself. Please use your language correctly.” He’s right.

Myth #5: Blogging is where the money is

Truth: Let me hit you in the head. Right now.

I blog. I love to blog. But what actually makes me money is writing features for websites (yes those boring “top 10 baby names that are also shapes” articles), social media consulting, and permalance positions I’ve had where I work as an editor/community manager/someone who complains about your tweets position.

Myth #6 : I have no friends

Truth: This is actually kind of true, but it has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with the fact that I really like talking about “48 Hours Mysteries.” Most of my “work friends” are online. And I think they exist. I’ve met some of them in real life and will be meeting more again in a few weeks at BlogHer. Keeping real life friends is harder. Lately, I either work or feed my chubby baby and when friends are all, “Let’s do something!” I’m like, “Can it involve me sleeping?”

But I think everyone feels this way.

Working at home, it’s just working. It’s not some mythical land of fun and pajamas and happiness all day. Although, I do have a unicorn, right here, working beside me.

Can you get strep from eating cheerios off your butt? Because, that’s probably how she got it. So, we’re going to make a tent, listen to some Bob Marley and eat our weight in crayons. I hope you have a good weekend.

Here is what I’ve been doing on the internet:

Defending spreadsheets and love

Uncovering Google’s secret lair

Revealing that Senators do lines of coke off kittens

Telling Jessica Simpson to eat all the nuggets she wants