It was too quiet in my friend ML’s house. After spending two days in Manhattan, the silence of her neighborhood was almost unsettling. I needed to hear conversations, music…many things at one time. I needed to find a Starbucks.
Luckily, there is one close to her house even though I took the long way to get there. Any coffee house would have done, but when I go into Starbucks it is familiar with electrical outlets, music, and food. Just like going to an office…anywhere you are.
No Baby A. No M. No Kitties. No diapers. No tugging.
It’s just me on the East Coast. For five days I get to step out of my mommy role and back into my professional one. Today is day one and I already I feel like the pre-baby me.
It isn’t that I have changed (too much), but my circumstances have. Because my days are filled with child-caring and working, I’m in survival mode. The business-minded, go-getter in me gets muted, which has made me feel lost. Strange.
It only took me one day of talking with editors and walking through New York to make the business brain reemerge. Everyone needs some time alone to put things in perspective, whether it is a vacation, a business trip or a mixture of both.
So today begins five days of girl time. Sure, I’ll miss sharing my adventures; I know that when I return, I’ll be a better wife, mother…me.
I’m always amazed how periods of great stress can help me see things with such clarity. It isn’t the life altering events such as a death or a divorce that I am talking about, but the everyday grind to seem to crescendo like a great piece of music. The times in our lives when everyone, everything needs to be done. Right. Now.
2010 so far has been one of those periods. (I’m happy it hasn’t included those life altering ones since I’ve been there, done both and lived through them.) Lots of work, lots of baby growing and lots of juggling. I’m not a Master Juggler— one ball always seems to not get the lift it needs.
That ball is usually an important one. And lately, it’s either me, or M., or both. That’s unfortunate because if I can’t give attention to myself and my husband then I’m really not being a good mom and role model to Baby A. So, it’s during these times that I always seem to realize how off my life-work balance is and how it always seems to be off. I seem to be an all-or-nothing type of girl, even though I never used to be. At least, I don’t think I was.
Despite my frazzled disposition, I’m grateful for these times because they make me step back, take a breath, and make long-term changes that hopefully will ease the stress during the next busy period.
Recently, I got paid. For most people this is a regular occurrence. Every two weeks or on the 1st and 15th of each month, they get paid for the work that they do. And here’s the kicker, it comes whether they do their jobs or not.
That is not the case for me. As a freelance writer, I do the work and then, depending on the contract, I get paid once the work is accepted or published. The reality of it is that I might see a check 30 days after a submission, or 120 days after a submission, or as in one case, a year and counting after a submission. I know this, I plan for it, I have accepted it. So when the postman does deliver a check, I deem him or her the check fairy.
You see, the check fairy is a lot like the tooth fairy. Both are imaginary but have real people doing their work. Both leave monetary surprises for work done. [Making teeth is a harder than we might think, just ask my son.] And, finally, their visits are happy occurrences. In the case of the check fairy, bills can be paid, money can be saved and presents—whether for yourself or others—can be purchased.
Getting paid the old-fashioned way, while nice, wouldn’t nearly be as interesting. Thank you check fairy. I hope you visit more in the coming months.
Blogging used to be a normal part of my day. So far in 2010 it barely has been a bleep on my radar. Honestly, it should be a daily activity for me. Why? It isn’t because of a desperate need to share my life with everyone or to become obsessed with blog traffic stats (and yes that does happen). When I decide to sit down to blog, I am waking up my mind, waking up my fingers, and waking up my consciousness. It makes my work easier because I am not trying to transition from mommy to writer in one swoop. Sure, time is short but in the end I think the results are better when I blog first then work. I move quicker.
That being said, you should see more of me in February. Now, the key is not to become obsessed with daily posts and stats.
So far this year I haven’t blogged much. Mostly because Baby A hasn’t napped much. When I do finally make my way to the computer, I just have to do it: write, research, email, whatever. There is no time to warm-up my brain. The truth is that I miss writing here, but at the same time I’m doing something that I have never really done—chill out.
Here’s the thing about Baby A not napping: It stresses me out. My inner dialogue wigs out that if he doesn’t sleep that I won’t get my work done, I won’t be able to interview, and I won’t be able to cross things off my to-do list. But this year something is different and I’m not sure whether it is because we spent the year fighting a cold or that A. is teething, but I have been able to quiet that tightly-wound voice. Instead, if he doesn’t sleep I enjoy playing more. I’ve never really felt comfortable just being with Baby A—always had to check or compose an email, because I could miss something. What I was missing was my son developing into a little person.
So 2010 may mean a little less blogging (and sleeping) from me but if it means that I can enjoy my family while also providing for them, it’s worth it.
This is all I need. Photo from net_efekt
If it isn’t written down, forget it. It won’t get done. I live by my to-do list. It keeps me focused in a I-don’t-need-to-think-about-what-needs-to-be-done way, because everything is written on my trusty pad.
Without my pad, my days would be chaos. I wander around the house doing things halfway and then get distracted by Baby A or something else I see that I should do, only to come back to the first thing a half hour later and say, “Oh, yeah. That’s what I was doing.” Instead, my time sans child has purpose and is productive.
Without my pad, I would go to Trader Joe’s, CVS, Ralphs, Whole Foods, and even, the farmer’s market and walk away without whatever it was that drove me to go there in the first place.
Without my pad, I won’t have a growing list of books that I want to read, websites that I want to check out, or songs that I want to download.
And without my pad, article ideas, leads, and blog posts that come to me in the strangest places would get lost in the ether of my brain, possibly forever.
I didn’t work yesterday. This isn’t a huge thing because since Baby A was born there have been many days that I haven’t done any work. The difference yesterday was that I made a conscious decision not to. After filing an article in the morning I decided to stay away from the computer. I needed the break. My love/hate relationship with my laptop was becoming more hate than love. I’m glad that I did it because today I am able to sit down with my money maker and be happy to do so.
Have you taken some real time off lately?
I’ve written about the ability to get things done during (or even taking) a nap. And since it has been a busy month work wise. (Yay!) I have had to take advantage of those two glorious hours each day when Baby A sleeps. Well, I needed to.
Toward the end of last week, A. decided that his nap wasn’t important and that he didn’t need to sleep when and for as long as he has been. I realize that each day with a toddler is a new adventure; however, I needed those naps. I scheduled interviews during nap time for Thursday and Friday.
On Thursday, Baby A went from sleeping in his stroller that normally lulls him to crying in his crib. It wasn’t steady but intermittent, kind of like when he sleeps. This went on for the 30 minutes leading up to my phone interview. So I took a deep breath, lowered the volume on the baby monitor (though I could still hear him) and made the call. As A. proceed to get louder, I interviewed a PhD about his latest study and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. I did, but decided I needed a full-proof plan for Friday’s interview.
Since Baby A had a peditarian appointment, an hour and a half after my scheduled interviewed I decide to use the car as my vessel. On Friday, it was his crib and my office. Fifteen minutes before he normally needs to nap, A. and I got in the car and drove to the only drive-thru Starbucks in the area to get coffee. By the time I got to the drive-thru ATM a few miles away he was asleep and my interview was in 15 minutes. So I parked and waited for the call.
Thanks to the earphone mic I have for my cell phone I was able to conduct my interview while Baby A slept behind me. He did wake up during my conversation, but was quiet. (Such a good boy.) So until this approach doesn’t work I’m thankful to have this system:
Step 1: Schedule interview during nap time.
Step 2: Put child in car seat and start driving about 30 minutes prior to interview. Child should fall asleep.
Step 3: Find a safe quiet place to park and conduct the interview in car. Note: If child wakes up AND begins to cry, step out of the car to continue. Do not step away from the car. Wrap it up as soon as possible.
Is this your Black Friday tradition? Photo by No Dents
Thanksgiving in my house was always a strange day. G. would cook this huge dinner—an enormous turkey, two types of stuffing, enough sides to choke a horse and at least two types of pies—for three people. My mom and I never ate too much. I usually ended up sick afterward and she was thinking about bed because she had (and has) to wake up early for Black Friday.
My mom doesn’t shop; she’s one of the many people who works in retail. She always has. Growing up, I worked in the stores she managed but I was always spared on Black Friday. To this day, I avoid malls or any other store like the plague the day after Thanksgiving. I know first hand the chaos and I prefer a simpler life, one that doesn’t involve fighting crowds, stalking people for their parking space and standing in long lines.
But for all of you bargain shoppers out there, here’s another way you can prepare for the biggest shopping day of the year, compliments of University of Utah marketing professors. Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra have found that the types of food we eat, such as turkey, make us behave less impulsively. In other words, if you’re looking to spend less this holiday season, eat a good Thanksgiving meal.
I’m not sure that I buy this. For years, the stores that my mom has worked at have beat out the prior Black Friday. And Americans aren’t getting any thinner. The husband and wife’s research was based on surveys administered after Thanksgiving dinner. There could be a good 8 hours before you see a cash register after you inhale all the turkey and trimmings. However, now that the time between dinner and your favorite stores opening is diminished greatly (I know of some places that are opening at 10 PM on Thanksgiving) maybe the gluttony of the holiday meal will mean restraining the credit card. (And well, there is also the economy.) We will have to see.
Whether you decide to shop until you drop or do anything else (there’s a kickball game in Palm Springs that I would like to attend), enjoy Black Friday. It’s a holiday tradition that is truly unique.
