I’m interrupting the book launch excitement to share a brief real-life update of what it is like to pursue a print deadline while parenting, juggling work commitments, and navigating all of summer 2022.
On Monday my husband and I packed up our 3 kids plus 1 bonus kid, a ton of food, a lot of sunscreen, and a ridiculous amount of gear, and headed off camping for a week. The first night was full of drama with one child’s thumb crushed in the trailer screen door and an attempted late night trip to the hospital (a tummy issue unrelated to the thumb that ultimately resolved on its own before we arrived at the emergency room). Morning #1 at camp brought gorgeous sunshine, a lot of coffee, and one freshly received email in my inbox from my Editor. My manuscript was ready for its final review and I had 5 days to review, modify, and return it in order to meet my print deadline and publishing date. It became clear that opportunities to work on it were becoming fewer and further apart as the week continued. My husband had to leave Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings for work, during the nights my three year old was awake more than she slept, and there were constant complaints, demands, and sibling fights. I spent most of my time sweating and quietly swearing under my breath wondering why it seemed like there was about 45 minutes between cleaning up from a meal that my children hardly ate, before preparing another meal that my children would also hardly eat. And those sweet 45 minutes? They were spent frantically applying sunscreen, finding swimsuits, throwing towels into a bag, prepping snacks (yep, more eating!) and getting out of whatever I was wearing that I had slept in the night before. By morning #3 my manuscript still sat neglected and un-reviewed on my closed laptop.
For me the reality is that my family’s needs feel endless. Camping or at home, I feel like I am almost always needed by someone. When I get my little kids tucked in for the night, my pre-teen wants to talk while I braid her hair. Or if I try to get up early to write, my three year old gets up too.There is often time-sensitive work that needs to be done for our family business when it is the most inconvenient (for me)…And that’s just life right now.
I have moments of deep resentment that my current lifestyle doesn’t afford me a lot of time and space to tend to my own needs–because needs are legit and mine are valid too. The thing is, I could be quietly full of frustration at this season of my life while pretending to you that I wrote a book while still doing it all, but that would be far from the truth. I did not try to do it all and I’m still not trying to do it all. Do not picture me sitting with my laptop and a cup of peppermint tea, well rested and thoughtful, writing pages and pages until all my words have drained out. Instead, picture me opening my laptop at the kitchen counter and tapping out a sentence or two before tending to the 80th kid-request of the day, leaving sentences trapped somewhere between my mind and my fingertips, only for them to be lost into the chaos of my other thoughts before I can return to type them out.
This past week gave me the ultimate opportunity to surrender instead of rallying against the frustration. In this case, not doing it all looked like camping and giving my family my full attention (and every ounce of my patience) while my manuscript sat, mostly, unread. And I have no regrets.
If (when?) I come across a sentence printed in the book that I wish I had rewritten in this final round of editing, I am going to choose to look at it like this:
How appropriate that I wrote a book about how to BE present and to attune to children, while in the midst of actually BEING present and attuning to my own children.
So here’s to not doing it all. And here’s to celebrating this beautiful messy life not in the absence of frustration and resentment, but while in the midst of it all anyway.
Michelle