Over-under-whelmed
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I spend all day oscillating between wanting to be busier and wanting to be less busy. I can go from feeling completely wayward to totally overwhelmed in a matter of minutes. It can be as simple as one email, and all of a sudden, I’m panicking. Never mind that so many of the tasks I find overwhelming take less than an hour when I finally sit down to do them. And then, I’m back to feeling useless again. Even though at any given moment, I have dozens of things I could be doing.
I understand why I find both of these things satisfying on their own. Being busy means you’re needed, which gives you a sense of purpose. A reason for being. Plus, it’s simple. If you let someone else tell you what they need from you, you don’t have to figure it out yourself.
And being less busy means you’re more free to do whatever you want. This is great because you then get to do whatever you want. There are so many Elin Hilderbrand novels to read! (I mean, I’ve read them all. But I could read them again).
Maybe it’s the see-saw that gets to me. I want to identify as either busy or available, but I can’t seem to settle on one. I’m drawn to neatly-tied bows, problems with solutions. There’s no way to ensure I’m never busy; I have to make a living, for example, and I get invited to a lot of weddings (not to brag). Also, my cat requires so much attention. On the other hand, there are ways to ensure I’m always busy. In the push and pull between the two, I think I’ll wash up on the side of overwhelm.
For one thing, I’m planning to eventually embark on an adventure that will ensure I’m always busy and never have another spare moment to myself; or at least, that’s what people tell me. I’m planning to eventually become a mother.
Parenthood seems to give you a Most Important Thing. I’m not a parent yet, but this is what I hear. This feels, to me, like a perk, although it’s rarely pitched as such. A Most Important Thing solves my problems. It’s the reason I feel unsettled when I don’t have enough to do; isn’t there something more important to attend to? And it’s the reason I feel unsettled when I have too much to do; what if something important comes up, and I’m too busy to attend to it? Having a Most Important Thing is the answer.
But this scares me, too. A child comes before the rest of the world in a way that can remove me from the rest of the world. Or I worry that’s what I’d do. My Most Important Thing Would be an excuse.
The truth is, I love to duck out. And this is yet another fear. As much as I want to be needed, I also want the ability to back out when I’m overwhelmed. I once heard someone on a podcast (I apologize for not being able to quote them more accurately, I did try Googling it): “becoming a parent feels like both the most logical and the most illogical choice in the world.” Why would I want to make myself permanently busy? But at the same time, why wouldn’t I?
I have reasons for wanting a child far beyond a desire for a Most Important Thing. Many of them are more conventionally acceptable, but still, there’s no single explanation I could give for why I want to bring a child into the world. And it’s a heavy philosophical topic, one I’ve spent the better part of three years reading about. Ultimately, I want to. My partner wants to. We want to.
And yet, the closer I get to it, the more I find myself focusing on my schedule, and how busy (or not busy) I already feel. I have to hope that my conception of busy will change when I become one of a parent. That I’ll feel alive and free if I have time for a 20-minute walk, instead of a two-hour one. That it will feel like a luxury to have one night a week to watch TV, instead of three.
And I have to imagine, too, that when that happens, the same impulses will kick in that tell me I’m not doing enough. Those feelings of underwhelm, of uselessness. Those feelings that I should fill that one night a week with washing dishes or catching up on paying bills (this is my outdated conception of what parents do; obviously, all my bills are paid automatically online). I once had this idea that I would be fully self-actualized by the time I had kids; that I would shake all my hang-ups and be ready to focus exclusively on the next generation. But maybe not. In reality, parents are just people who decide to become parents (or don’t, unfortunately, thanks to SCOTUS). So there’s no easy to expect an easy scheduling solution.
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