Any time I end up with a little time truly to myself, I have to decide what I will do with the time. If I don’t decide, I just scroll on my phone until too much time has passed or I do common little daily chores and feel like it was a waste of time because I do those things even when I don’t have time to myself. As my kids have gotten older, these opportunities if time to myself have come up more often, so I’ve had to start making plans for myself.
Inevitably a good bit of the options have something to do with “getting it together”: menu planning, errand running, budgeting, cleaning/organizing something, making “necessary” lists about things I need to do/schedule/pay etc.
Then there’s the options that are more about “getting myself together” which includes things like working out, doing hair/skin/nail treatments, shopping for updated clothes/shoes/makeup/accessories, making “fun” lists about things I want to do or accomplish…
Another option is doing pleasure-able activities that I don’t usually get to do like watching a movie or show that only I would like while I eat in the living room (completely uninterrupted), getting together with a friend/having friends over, journaling, making playlists., etc. Or, of course, the best option: go to a coffee shop.
The coffee shop can actually involve all the options at once. I can get my life together, do something for myself, and do something I don’t usually get to do.
The best kind of coffee shop time is the kind I never get anymore which is hours long with no one else in the world expecting anything from me or waiting on me to come home or do a task. In a place that is preferably not Starbucks (just not very comfortable and usually crowded).
I got a mocha with raspberry tonight while I wait to pick up my oldest. In a few months, she’ll have her after 9’s and this won’t really be a thing the way it is now. I could go out while she’s out, but I won’t have to kill time in the area. In a few years, it’ll start again with my youngest.
I highly prefer this kind of killing time versus the kind where you are small talking other parents at kid parties and ball games. But I also know that those moments are important for building a sense of community and for helping me make connections within my children’s worlds. They are good interactions, but not preferable. You know, introvert things.
I guess the days will come again where I have hours to myself to write and think. I know you can write in the margins. I know if you write at all you are a writer. I know if I want to write, I have to write. I know.
But also, I know how I write when I’ve been allowed to breathe into the space around me and let my thoughts wander and float around until they come back to me with messages from other sources. I know how I write when I can spend hours on word choice and re-reading and thinking. I know how I write when my emotions are unleashed and I don’t have to maintain them – when they can dip and sink and soar; when they can bubble up from the depths, when they can wrench their way out of the compartments I keep them in so that I can function in this world. I know how I write when I can do that. And I can’t do that in an hour.
But I can do this in an hour. I can remember the capacity within me.
Maybe I’ll find another way. A way to do this at 5 in the morning after I walk the dog but before I make sure the high school gets to the bus. Or maybe at 10pm once the day has run it’s course and the night owl 5th grader falls asleep but still go to bed by 11pm because I have to get get up before 6am.
There’s just so many calculations. So many logistics all the time. Motherhood is logistics. Logistics require their own form of creativity, it’s just not quite the kind I use to write.
Or maybe, I can find a different way to access my thoughts and emotions. Something quicker, more manageable. People do it. But some people don’t. Is it that they can’t? That’s how it feels for me. Like I have to put in work every day to maintain, to be presentable and functional. I don’t mean to put on a show or anything; I mean just to fulfill regular being-a-person-in-the-world responsibilities and tasks. Will it be different when my kids are older? Maybe? Being a present and thoughtful parent also takes creativity – just not the kind I use to write.
The kind I use to write is just…it’s demanding in it’s own way. It needs it’s own attention. It needs all of me. I can write plenty not in that place, but it’s not writing. It’s not coming from the well I know I have within. It’s just scooping off the top. I know there’s so much more.
I miss diving into that well. There is a part of me in there, waiting. But I think I know that once I’m really able to do that on a regular basis, it may mean that I have turned the page on a chapter that I will never get to live again and will only be able to re-visit via reminiscing. And if this is true the way I think it is, the well can wait. I will live fully in the moments I am in now.
I can write about them later.
