New Year, New Blog
I built this website to showcase my art and share my writing back in 2025. At the time, I was eight or nine months pregnant and thought, “maternity leave…. I’ll have so much time to journal and blog and paint! The baby will sleep and I will create.” Anyone who has had a baby may be chuckling at my naiveté´, or maybe you are one of the lucky few whose baby sleeps both at night and during naps, maybe even in their crib. We are lucky beyond measure, but not so when it come’s to our little one’s sleeping habits.
So, I built this little platform, figured out the formatting and technical steps that I thought would be annoying while caring for a baby (correct move there), then had a baby and this site was shoved to the bottom of my priority list. It never quite left my mind, but I also didn’t see an urgency to try writing on three hours of sleep. Now though, January 14th, 2026, I sit here with a four month old in my lap and words in my head I feel a need to get down.
This past Monday I quit my job at Trader Joe’s. I had tried returning from my 12 weeks of leave part-time, but our little one would be screaming for hours and nothing my husband did seemed to help till I got home. Which isn’t surprising to me. My husband is incredible, and he is great at taking care of our son, but little H had spent the last year either inside of me or attached to me and is suddenly expected to be away from me for eight hours? That seems a tall order for someone barely 12 weeks old. Maybe he’d have gotten used to it eventually, but we found ourselves in a position to make it work with me staying home and that feels worth doing.
While the 12 weeks of maternity leave (unpaid FMLA, to be exact) flew by with no time to write, now life seems to be finding a flow. H still fusses and refuses to nap in the crib, but he can fall asleep in the carrier, and I can type while he’s wrapped to me. After zero sleep, 4-6 hours of broken sleep plus some coffee feels surprisingly refreshing. While I know patterns will continue to change as he grows, what once felt insurmountable feels increasingly manageable as time goes on.
So, now what? Full-time motherhood of one little guy does leave some time available to pursue my goals. I’ve sold my art in the past at markets around Pittsburgh under the name, JMH Botanicals, but they felt few and far between. This year, I plan to take myself more seriously. Learning, marketing, creating, and hopefully collaborating with others on projects I care about like the local food zine from a couple years ago.
I am excited for this new phase of life. There is so much to be grateful for, especially the little bundle curled up on me, but also all the change he has brought to our life – the cutest catalyst for career change and development I could imagine. This blog is a pretty open-ended landing pad for my thoughts as I try new techniques, study art, study life, and hopefully grow as a person and professional artist. I hope you find it a journey worth following along, and that my sharing brings something to you whether a practice, an idea, or inspiration to try, or not try, something new.
Thank you for following along.
xx
Julianna Mackenzie