Newsletter - Work and life, it's a tricky balance...

Hello,

I find that a lot of my work happens while I'm not at work but rather when I'm at the dinner table with my family, when I'm in the shower with my thoughts, when I'm listening to the radio while packing my kids' lunches.

Being a creative means not being able to leave work at work. This is hard, and if it's not managed it can take a toll on the quality of life. Sometimes by burning out and having to stop for a while.

Before I was introduced to motherhood my life consisted of trying to keep up with all my tasks and deadlines and editorial demands while constantly worrying about when the work would dry up. In hindsight I spent a lot of time spinning in circles, not realising how much time I spent in the company of my own anxiety.

My anxiety now worries less about my work and more about the three little people I'm moulding into humans. Work happens on the go, in between, after bedtime and while cooking dinner. I run a pretty tight ship with a rigid routine and a clear task list so I can keep up with all the demands of motherhood and small business ownership. I only have 25 hours a week at my disposal for work, but I try very hard to be as efficient as possible. I use pomodoro's to get through tedious tasks and music to get through the easy ones. I try to limit my time on social media and not get distracted while I'm working on something, and schedule time for catching up around the times of day when my brain is not at its most productive. Within this I have created room for flexibility. Kids get sick, school goes on strike, partner is out of town, you name it I'm ready for it.

Except for this February.

February 2020 went a little like this: my kids' teacher's union went on strike 6 days, there was also a PD-day and a holiday, so kids were out of school for 8 out of 20 days. Of the remaining 12 days of school we received two separate viruses at our door, knocking out another 4 days of school and the entire family (except me), and out of the remaining 8 days of work I spent 3 going to city offices because of a bureaucratic mishap. So this month I've had 5 days to work. Did I mention that my computer died at the beginning of the month and I couldn't get the one I've been saving for since 2018 because the coronavirus shut down the factory? Yeah, that happened too. My task list looks about the same as it did January 31.

I usually tell my students to think of their task lists as an elephant: you can only eat an elephant in small bites but eventually you will get there. This month I feel as if the elephant is sitting on my head laughing while farting in my face.

But here's what's great about February. I didn't loose any data because I back everything up. My family is getting sick a lot, but better now than the first week of March when I'm solo-parenting, and hopefully this will give them a boost to their immune system before the forecasted corona virus comes around. Also, February has a special extra day, a bonus day, where my partner and I have decided to finally tie the knot after 11 years and three kids.

This won't happen at City Hall, as planned, because that was part of the bureaucratic mishap, but it will take place in our living room, which will be the same mess it always is, and in front of our three children with only our photographer and her husband as witnesses alongside a very lovely officiant I found through the grapevine. Our rings are made from recycled gold through a jewler in Montreal, they are beautiful, only his doesn't fit and mine is too tight, even though we got our sizes checked. Because February...sigh. Since my daughter insisted on the kids getting rings too I got little toy ones for them. So we are getting married. As a family. With a bunch of small rings.

Sometimes it rains, sometimes it's a storm, sometimes even a perfect storm, but always there are people around: family, friends, community, events, things that make all the mayhem and chaos and farting elephants worthwhile.

March 12, 2020, edited to add: I wrote this at the end of February. As you all know by now so much has changed in the world, and I was wondering if I should take this newsletter out of circulation because this seems small now. But then I reconsidered, because while my problems of February are miniscule compared to what is happening in the world today, the message I wanted to share remains the same: We have each other. So now instead, I ask you:

How are you doing?