So busy so bored

Maybe you'll have time when you're 45, according to at least one study!

I want to spend the day writing to you, but Nellie is home with an ear infection and my brain is all dull anyway from all the night-sobbing that tipped me off.

Tomorrow is one of our monthly random early dismissals. Next week is spring break (9 days without school). The week after that, there’s no school Friday or the following Monday. A FOUR DAY WEEKEND immediately following spring break. And of course, we all know what’s coming on the heels of spring break and that’s summer.

I don’t dread summer, or at least I don’t want to. I like to be with my kids and take them spontaneous places like the beach or whatever. 50% of the time those days turn out really well, with all of us sticky and sunscreen splotched, and tired in a sweet bone-deep, watery sort of way. That’s usually such a high that it balances out the 50% of those loose days that bomb hard and end in overheated bodies and tears all around.

Everything costs, though, so I still have to get work done. Unfortunately, I mean the paid kind, not this nice, creative-outlet kind, and I’ll have very few hours to do it in. I’ll be so busy. I’ll spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week thrusting myself — ideally an impeccably regulated, light-of-heart, magically present version of myself — into the moment with the kids (enjoy it! don’t miss this!! they’re growing up too fast!!!!).

In all the other in between times, I’ll be a pinched, pressed, stressed maniac trying to spit out work I can submit an invoice for to pay for all the pool side slushies, groceries, zoo passes, new swim suits, mineral SPF that they’ll actually wear and occasional pressure valve releases like neighborhood teen babysitting hours.

There won’t be room for, well, much of anything else. And I’ll know the reasons (many, systemic) but I’ll still blame myself for not managing my time well enough or not being someone who sets an alarm for 5 a.m. and fits in my me time before my kids get up. I waste my life doing such base things as watching TV (a real, serious writer and thinker would never watch TV from 9-10:30 p.m. I AM WASTING MY LIFE IT’S ALL SLIPPING AWAY AND IT’S 100% MY FAULT!).

A friend sent me a screenshot that I’ll just show you because as I mentioned I’m tight for time (I shouldn’t even be here right now! I am so sure that my lack of time management skills is the problem even though I know that actually systemic failures and capitalist patriarchy are to blame!! Sorry for all the “!!” but it’s how I feel!! )

This is from a study, The Free-Time Gender Gap: How Unpaid Care and Household Labor Reinforces Women’s Inequality, released by the Gender Equity Policy Institute in October of last year.

I can’t decide if the stat is depressing or validating and therefore a little comforting or BOTH. Thrilling to know that I may have slightly more free time in 4 years when I turn 45. And just think how much time I’ll have when I am dead! Literally an eternity to finally sit with my own thoughts and perhaps even feed them with some good books, and then express them in a careful, artful, well-read way.

A friend (and then another friend and then

Janet

) have describe their life as a mom in their 40s as “so busy, so bored.” I think I’ve talked about it here before (but I don’t have time to check rn so sorry you get it) but it really haunts me.

For EXAMPLE: I have been trying to take another 3 hour surfing lesson FOR 2 YEARS. The beach is 90 minutes away. The lesson would take a few hours. I have the gear. Sweet lord! That’s not that hard. It is also impossible.

I keep shrinking my expectations (I’ll try to just read a book about surfing!), and / or randomly signing up (paying for) classes so that I have external pressure (spent money) to actually take time away from the kids and work (work and work) to do something that might feed me. But even these spaghetti-at-the-wall efforts are tough to swing because I’m just overbooked and overstretched all the time in terms of both time and money and brain juice.

For EXAMPLE: I am taking a writing class with Rachel Yoder (NIGHTBITCH!) and it’s just 5 sessions. Once a week, 5-7pm, over zoom. We’re two classes in and I’ve already missed one and it was a session (grab your tissues) with Yoder and RIVKA GALCHEN. Guys, Little Labors is one of the three books in my new motherhood 3-pack (an imaginary 3-pack of my favorite books about new motherhood). I would have died to be there but also in the moment I just … skipped. It was one thing too many that day, and that’s just what it was. It wasn’t even hard to decide to skip — it was so obviously what had to happen. There was work, the kids were a lot. The week had been just jammed, unbelievably non-stop. Something had to give, and me was that something. I gave it up. I needed ease more than I needed to go sit on Zoom with 50 other people exactly like me listening to people who are much, much, much more successful than me. I sort of couldn’t take the longing of it all, the striving, the tease — imagine having the time to fine tune a piece of writing like Rivka! Imagine having a mind that good!

Waist deep in of all this busy (bottomlessly busy) boredom, the life raft I’d thrown for myself when I booked that class felt all mean and prickly instead of smooth and airy.

Thanks for reading this, I know you don’t have any time either. I won’t tell that you actually finished pooping 3 minutes ago and are spending a few extra minutes sitting here just scrolling with me. Take what you can get. Honored to be a small part of what I can only assume is a stolen bathroom moment.