I don’t do special events well. Birthdays and holidays stress me out because they seem to just be a lot of extra stuff to do. My house suffers from a lack of decorating and prettiness because I’m doing my best to get it picked up and clean (and mostly failing). Time for myself and to spend with my husband or individual kids is hard to come by. I am always, always overtired. This is what I call survival mode.
Every morning I make my list of things to do. I try to pick out the three most important ones to really focus on, and I have my regular list of things that are supposed to get done every day. Every night I go over my list and realize that I have achieved about a third of those items. I usually get the most pressing things done on time, but not always.
So when the writer on one of my favorite blogs, Crystal Paine at moneysavingmom.com, came out with a book titled “Say Goodbye to Survival Mode” I ordered it right away.
Crystal’s book is well written and has very good, time tested tips for organizing your life and your time. It is packed to the brim with common sense and ways to apply these ideas to your family. It’s a good book. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
But.
As I read it I found myself getting more and more distressed. What is wrong with me that I can’t do these simple things that are so very obvious? I put the book down for a couple weeks and came back to it feeling the same way. Of course simple changes are not necessarily easy changes, but there was something more as well that was nagging at me and I couldn’t figure out what on earth it was.
Finally a couple things occurred to me:
1. There are two kinds of people in this world. Well, more than two kinds but I’m splitting people, specifically mothers, into two kinds for this immediate moment, you can divide yourselves differently later on if you like. One kind is like a dear friend of mine, and like the author of this book. Logical thinkers and active doers. She sees something that needs to be done and then she does it. No hemming and hawing, no excuses. She is good at focusing and staying on task.
One time I had my friend over to help me clean out my playroom. Oh my heavens, she was a slave driver! She kept me on task for hours and wore me out entirely. But I realized recently that while that task was draining for me, it was energizing for her. Kind of like how extroverts and introverts gain their energy in different ways, she was able to pull energy out of the task of putting things in order. I, on the other hand was exhausted by such a task. I tend to be more creatively based. I am energized by making something, decorating, fussing around. Some might call me distractable. They’d be totally correct.
While my friend can focus like a telephoto lens, I operate on a more wide angle basis. I can see the things that need to happen, but can be easily overwhelmed by the enormous scope of possibilities. As a child I was often called lazy for the outward appearance of not doing anything. What I realized as an adult is that I am not at all lazy, I am efficient. What I am doing while people bustle around me getting stuff done is to calculate where my effort is best spent. I guess that does make me lazy in that I am not willing to put any of my energy to waste. The problem arises when I take all my time deciding where to get to work. “Say Goodbye to Survival Mode” was helpful in showing me what some of the important things to work on might be, but it was unhelpful because it assumed a mindset that is not natural to me.
2. I really like to read mommy blogs, there are some really good ones out there and I love that we can share in this vocation together instead of living in isolation. It is so easy to feel alone when you are up to your eyeballs in dishes, diapers, and laundry, and everything you clean is immediately undone. I learn a lot from these other mothers and look to them for recommendations on how to save money, deal with discipline situations, and organize a family life.
But I noticed an interesting thing this past week, in going through this book, reading other blogs, and wondering why I still always feel like I’m three steps behind. Many of these mothers start pumping out advice when all of their children are between the ages of 3 and 12.
Ah. That explains so much. The years when your kids are between 3 and 12 is the sweet spot of parenting. You have left behind the diaper bag days, everyone can buckle themselves in the car and carry their own gear, most of the time you can sleep through the night, there aren’t any raging hormones (outside of your own body, anyway), and the kids can usually participate in the same activities or at least occupy themselves at a sibling’s lesson or practice. Oh yes, I envy them these years and I hope they enjoy them for what they are: temporary. It is very easy to feel like you have everything figured out during this time of parenting, because for that time, you kind of do. There aren’t nearly the curve-balls that babyhood or adolescence can throw at you during that time.
That is not to say it is easy, parenting never is. But for that short time, it is more straightforward.
I don’t exist in that time of parenting. I have kids in that zone, but I also have babies, teenagers, and young adults. It is the older ones that can really keep you hopping. Their crises are much more full of stress and future consequences, not to mention drama and hormones.
When I realized that this author was writing from that sweet, holy place in the middle of parenthood, that I am not in, I was finally able to let myself off the hook. My life is not similar to hers, therefore I can’t compare myself to the things she achieves. I don’t claim that my life is harder, but I do think I have a few more plates spinning, which keeps my attention more diffused.
As a parent I am straddling almost all of the developmental milestones at once – it is one of the gifts and burdens of a large family or a wide age spread in children. What I need is not more solid control. I need an outline of a plan, held with an open palm like the tenderest of slowflakes. I need the ability and flexibility to switch gears at a moments notice. This flexibility can look and feel like chaos. When I can do it well it feels more like a dance.
I like this book, I will put to work what advice I can fit into my life from its pages, but it is not a life changer, except in the way it helped me to understand my own personality and family a little better.