Learning to focus
It’s ironic that now I have more time to do things (because I have childcare) and yet feel I have less time (probably because I’m also sole-income provider for our family now). I went walking this morning and I watched the minivans trundling up to the school near our house and the kids biking to the middle school at the other end of the neighborhood and the neighbors opening their garages to pull out for work and felt absolutely disconnected. None of us goes to work now, none of us goes to school — sometimes I think, are we insane? Who thought we could get away with this? I feel off-the-grid despite being right in the middle of things.
But back to time/no-time — I’ve been cutting back on things that used to be a pleasure but now feel like obligations. I went nomail on my writing list and nomail on a homeschool list and then I just now resigned from Literary Mama. I did these things because I was starting to curse under my breath (oh let’s be honest! out loud!) when things needing my input trickled into my overflowing inbox and even if those didn’t really, I felt guilty anyway for not being more present, more excited, more giving to the enterprise of each.
It’s like when you decide to clean out your closet and you throw things away and it feels so wonderful that you start casting around for more things to toss because now I’m thinking, what else? What else could I unsubscribe from? What else could I shuck off my list of things to do?
Actually I’ve got other volunteer and social activities to take their places. (It’s always something!) But mostly it was that two of those things (the list, LitMama) I got into because I thought they’d help me write and yes, they did but now they don’t and it’s not an issue with those things, it’s an issue with me.
In any case, the last thing I edited at LitMama is a great, hard-to-read essay: That Mom.
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