Saturday night, while my kids were sleeping and my husband was watching football with friends, I decided it would be a grand idea to drunkenly journal. I’ve never done that before, taking my heightened emotional state and put them into words. I guess I’ve always feared going back and trying to read whatever hot mess I jotted down. But this time, the wine won, and I released some of my insecurities. While I was unkind to myself in most of my writing. Beating myself up over my reaction to things or my lack of ability to reach a standard I set for myself, I noticed a pattern. I never had enough time.
Time is my biggest enemy. One that I am not sure how to beat. Our society is not built for how the modern day works. We still expect families to function as if only one parent works while the other one is home. How else are we supposed to maintain a clean house, have fresh meals prepared and chauffeur our children between school and sports? Because with both parents working, this feels utterly impossible without outside assistance.
I don’t know how many times I feel like a failure because I have to sacrifice something to spend time with my family. Sometimes the house is a mess because I don’t have time to clean as deeply as I want to because I am with my family at baseball games. Other times I am sneaking away to write and feeling guilty because I am not giving my kids my undivided attention. I would rather sacrifice my house and spend time with my kids doing something they love than have a Pinterest home. Which evidently isn’t true because drunk me does not believe that at all.
Right now my youngest is napping. I have loads of laundry in the wash and the dryer and the oldest are playing video games. While I am in the living room watching them play, I am typing away as quickly as possible. I’m trying to divide my attention and time being present with them while satisfying my need to still enjoy what I want to do while trying to keep some order in my house.
No wonder why I feel like I am going crazy when I actually have a moment to breathe. I need to divide myself into three people. This isn’t even including when I have to go back to work. God forbid I add lesson planning and grading to the mix. Because that’s when I lose my moments of peace.
I don’t know how, as a society, we can keep going with this model. Women are burnt out, exhausting themselves trying to do everything at once. I don’t know how some do it as single parents. Even though I have an amazing husband who helps with a lot of things, there is still not enough time.
Rather than recharging and getting ready for the school year, I’m not doing that during Christmas vacation. I am trying to catch up on everything that I have neglected. While it feels good to check something off my list, the list keeps growing. I wanted to finish editing my manuscript but when I sit down to write; I think about other things I should be doing.
I need to change the way I think. I need to challenge myself to understand time differently and be kinder to myself because how I am treating myself is not working. There is no way to expand the hours of the day. I need to come to terms with some people’s houses being cleaner than mine. I need to be okay with people writing and publishing faster than I do. Because if I don’t, I will fall apart and that will be worse than a pile of laundry waiting to be folded.