It's spring break week here. At a playdate today, my friend asked how I was going to have the time to get out today's #365StrongStories installment. While we spoke at three this afternoon, I had absolutely no idea. I just knew or would happen somehow.
This yearlong writing project has forced me to get even more vigilant about carving out for "me time." But trying to make time to work and create isn't a new problem - it's as old as the concept of women with stuff to do even with kids underfoot.
This story is excepted from last year's post on the trials and tribulations of meeting writing deadlines even during spring break:
My stepmom kindly recommended I take off my coat and get some work done while she took the kids for a walk.
Clearly I was exuding deadline stress, and I risked infecting everyone around me.
How could I be surprised that I couldn’t get clear on my writing and I felt choked with “bad mom” guilt? I wasn’t asking for the dedicated creative time I needed and so I was spreading myself too thin as I tried (and failed) to dot it all.
I felt like a fraud, offering advice from and “I’ve got this” blogging pulpit when I was actually just being a terrible, distracted house guest with a couple of needy dependents.
Gratefully, I took that gift of thirty minutes free of mom responsibilities to check back in with my real message, my lived experience, my own imbalance.
I think I found a story worth telling and I drafted a new container to tell it. And then I discovered the space to walk to the beach with my girls – twice.
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