The days are long but time feels scarce

I'm craving a slower pace, but it feels illegal to slow down while paying for childcare.

After I watch my husband and toddler stroll across our backyard to the neighborhood park, I move my laptop to the kitchen table and light a candle. With a few deep inhales of pumpkin spice, I rearrange two paragraphs and make editing notes on another. This is pleasureful writing, an intentional and relaxed pocket of time—something I seem to only experience when my son is with his father or a grandparent. 

It isn’t that I don’t trust our child’s babysitters. We found a couple of sweet, responsible, medical field-bound university students to provide in-home care about 15 hours a week.  I’m nearby, working in my basement office while they color, sing, and play with my son. I encourage them to visit story time or local parks, and I leave for a coffee shop whenever it works for my schedule. I do trust them, and I’m grateful to have them in our lives. 

The problem is that I struggle to be anything but the Energizer Bunny when I’m paying for childcare. With a sitter on the clock, it feels downright illegal to:

• Go for a walk by myself

• Sit on the couch and read

• Workout and shower

• Lay down for 15 mins

• Journal

• Eat lunch while watching TV

• Enjoy myself in any way outside of Getting. Work. Done.

In many ways, motherhood has improved my work-life balance with built-in structures and shifted priorities. I can now accomplish in three hours what used to take me six, and for awhile this made me feel like a superhero (here comes Hyper-productivity Woman)! But lately, my Get Shit Done battery is running low, and I’m reevaluating my relationship with work, productivity, and the very nature of time itself.

Time feels so different, post-baby. Two years in, I’m still adjusting to a new temporal reality, one in which my kid’s hour and a half nap passes in an instant. I struggle to spend each sliver of time to myself in the “right” way, always weighing whether to get something done around the house, check off a list for work, or focus on something enjoyable for me—and what would be enjoyable for me? Working out? Reading? Watching TV? Staring at the wall? The choice paralyzes me, no matter how many steps I take to combat decision fatigue. Time scarcity stokes my anxiety, and while I know time might not always feel like a precious resource, it certainly does right now.

When our sitters returned from summer break in late August, my first few days of work felt like magic; I got so much done, so efficiently. It was like all my productivity was bottled up, just waiting for someone to take over childcare so I could let it go. In the last few weeks, something has changed. The more tasks I cram into my work hours, the more prone I am to checking out mid-task, unable to move forward because my brain short circuits. My frantic pace has petered out, and forcing my way through simply does not work anymore. Everything in me craves a slower pace with time to daydream, brainstorm, and move my body—even when copy needs writing, meals need prepping, emails need answering, and clothes need washing.

Last Thursday around noon, my stomach grumbled and my legs cramped. I just wrapped up copywriting all the things for a new episode of

Novel Pairings

, and I was tempted to power through the rest of my to-do list until nap time. Instead, I went upstairs, grabbed a protein bar, and sat at the table with my toddler and his babysitter. We chatted about our day and laughed at his gibberish sentences. It felt like catching up with a co-worker in the break room, and I felt the vice of productivity guilt ease up a bit.

The clock turned 12:35. I still had 30 minutes before commencing our nap time routine, and my mind raced through the possibilities: I could run back downstairs to my office and churn out an essay draft, I could write that podcast ad copy I’ve been meaning to get to, or I could take Penny for a quick walk. Against all of my hardwired overachiever instincts, I chose a walk.

Penny and I altered our usual path and pace, slowing down to sniff (her) and wander (me). As we passed the construction vehicles around the corner, an idea sparked at the back of my mind. When we rounded the bend, a tangle of revelations took over my attention, and by the time we got home, I’d unspooled my thoughts enough to turn them into this essay.

Shedding my over-industrious tendencies will take way longer than one short walk in the middle of a work day. This shit runs deep, all tangled up with financial stress, societal pressures, and internalized patriarchy—not to mention failing U.S. systems at play (that’s a series of essays for another day, another writer). I feel like I need to justify childcare costs with my earnings, and deep down, I also feel like I need to justify time away from my son with something to show for it.

I know that it’s worthwhile to spend an hour of childcare taking care of myself, but it feels like I should be milking every minute accomplishing work in order to compensate for that time.

I don’t have a neat way to wrap this up, and I definitely don’t have any handy tips to share. This is something I’m working on, one short break at a time. I can only hope that my next 15 minute walk, and each one thereafter, will make time feel slightly more expansive, more available, and more mine.

To find out more about my current reads, favorite things, and life updates follow me on Instagram. If you’re interested in reading classic literature with accessible guidance and a cozy community, check out the Novel Pairings podcast and Patreon.