Once upon a time, there was me.
I liked to read novels and stories and poems. I dreamed of writing my own book someday. I dreamed big (Canadian style): of winning a literary award and getting thousands of dollars to sit at a desk and write. Not because I wanted thousands of dollars or the things you can buy with thousands of dollars, but because I wanted to not have to work for $8/hr 40 hours a week to pay the rent and write during the cracks of time that were left over.
I worked a lot of different jobs and paid my rent and wrote during the cracks of time that were left over. Those cracks of time got smaller. The jobs got bigger and took up more space. Writing got pushed out.
In retrospect, I know I was wasting time. I wasted hours, days, weeks. It was ridiculous. It’s like thinking about how much water goes down the drain when you leave the tap on while you brush your teeth. You turn the tap off. Suddenly you get feral around people who leave the tap on. What was I thinking, leaving the tap on for 5 years!
I guess I thought someday my dreams would “come true.” I didn’t, for whatever reason, understand that dreams come true if you work *at them*, not at something else. Dreams come true because the people who dream them are concurrently learning and practicing and failing and getting up and doing it again, whatever the thing is they’re dreaming about. Dreams come true if you don’t waste your time lollygagging.
I had a kid and suddenly my dreamy dreams were a blurry background and in the foreground was a very sharp KID, saying, Oh hi. I am the important thing. Everything was about the KID and working around the KID. And it is easier to work around something that is tangible, I discovered. A physical roadblock is easier to hurdle than a mental one.
Then I had another kid. Because I like challenges. I have done the most writing of my life – except for the very prolific poetry years of 1992-94 – since having Fresco. It helps that I joined the writers group and I have to give them things to read. I write on weekends. I write at the expense of this blog, which is also writing but a different, more comfortable kind. And I write at naptime, because mornings are too early and evenings are the only time I get to talk to Saint Aardvark. (And also we go to bed and get up ridiculously early.)
Naptime is it. At least 45 minutes a day, at most 90 minutes. To write, clean the kitchen, get supper started, eat contraband chocolate, drink tea while it is hot, make phone calls. I do a lot at naptime. I do everything that is not child-related at naptime. I am in a naptime groove. I can actually see the end of a tunnel and how many naptimes it will take me to get there.
A while back, Trombone started giving up his afternoon nap. And that was – not fine exactly, but OK. Because Fresco was a baby. And he napped a lot. Or not; I don’t really remember. And if I got them to nap at the same time, the heavens opened and angels sang and I immediately did fifteen things I had been waiting two weeks to do.
Eventually, over months, Trombone learned how to have Quiet Time in his room. Part maturity, part ability to self-amuse, part bribery (you don’t get any treats after naptime unless you keep your door shut) and we are at a place where he happily goes and does his thing for an hour or so.
At the same time, Fresco, in his own room, has an afternoon nap. A much-needed afternoon nap. Without the afternoon nap, Fresco is a wreck by 4:30 pm.
THESE ARE THE RULES.
Lately he has started eschewing his naps. Every few days. The same way Trombone did except that Fresco doesn’t “do” Quiet Time. Partly because he is young, partly because he is, by birth, EXTREMELY NOISY and partly because he is still in a crib.
If I put toys in the crib, he throws them out. If I take him out of the crib, he will leave his room and then, the game is AFOOT. By which I mean he will get himself arrested for smoking pot in the school parking lot across the street.
If I put him in Trombone’s room, then it will no longer be Quiet Time, but Wrestling Star Wars Action Hero Buzz Lightyear Freakout Time. So what? What do people do?
Do you all just suck it up and work a 14 hour day with no breaks? Because that is not cool.
Are you all also currently wearing earplugs while your toddlers sing “You Got A Friend in Me” at 4 billion decibels? Because I can’t do this every day.
And is it too late to say, “I’m sorry I wasted 5 years of my life dreaming and wishing and hoping when I could have been working, can I please have those 5 years back in hour-long increments, I promise I will use them well?”
And if it’s not too late, who do I send the letter to?
Yeah, I kind of thought so.
Oh, owie.
And yes.
And when you find out who it is we need to speak with about all that water, please copy me as well? Because I weep for all that water under the bridge. I really do.
Mine never napped. Not never, *ever*, but not enough that it ever became reliable or anything other than a sudden lucky mad dash to do the laundry, kitchen, have a shower dammit before the end of naptime was nigh.
I admire the discipline you have found. You’ll find it again somehow, because you clearly have things that want to grow up out of those cracks. And I have no doubt at all that they will be beautiful.
Losing the nap is something I’m going through too. And I’m not taking it well. Not at all. It’s made me a very unhappy woman to tell you the truth. I have very reluctantly turned to the TV to help me get a bit of “time to myself” which is not really time to myself, but time spent with the kids in front of cartoons while I try desperately to get some stuff done before I feel I just can’t live with myself as a mother as they watch another cartoon.
9 months until preschool/kindergarten! Oh wait, you are going back to work aren’t you? Yeah, I got nothing.
Yes. 14-18 hour days. When it’s not kids, it’s work/housework/cooking – when it’s not work it’s C trying to convince me to sit down and do nothing except be with him.
*sigh*
You were soaking it in. You can’t write until you live. I don’t think years of learning who you are, and how you love, and how much crappy Chilean Merlot you can contain really counts as wasted down-the-drain time: it is what then fueled the re-finding, yeah?
As to the children and the 14 hour day, it never was something I could do. To steal Phantom’s line, I decided that sometimes, co-parenting with PBS was the healthy thing to do. And that sometimes, {{MOMMA IGNORE}} was a very real mental health strategy.
I started thinking about the 14 hour day just this morning. We get up at 5, my husband gets home from work at 7, that means I’m on the clock for 14 hours straight, with a 2-hour nap for my break.
If he stops napping he’s going to have to start quiet-timing, or there will be Trouble.
I wasted so much time, too. When I think of the writing I could have done during the pregnancy, I sort of hate myself a little bit.
I so felt like this when I went to work after my mat leave. I spent much of my ‘nap time’ during my mat leave playing around on the computer and doing some light house work. I didn’t do as much as I felt I should. And then when I went back to work, working 8 hours a day, plus the commute (which isn’t that bad) plus bedtime, dinner, laundry, cleaning and then trying to get some time for my husband and some alone time for me… well I felt like I could have done more with my mat leave because I had so much less time while working.
Anyway. I also totally totally agree with Arwen– time spent living is never a waste, especially if that time contains self-discovery.
Lastly, 14 hour days suck.
If I were you, I would do the best you can to encourage and continue quiet time. I know Fresco’s still a bit too young, but if you can try to keep him occupied with something quiet and then transition him back to alone time in his room… I think it will make a difference. I know my Mom always enforced quiet time… at home all day with 3 kids… she had to! But easier said then done!
I totally hear you on the going back to work. On the one hand, learning to be a parent is important work and a lot of mat leave is that. Your focus is pretty intense when you’re looking after a baby – especially if it’s your first time – so that mindless downtime is important too.
Trombone never napped while I was on mat leave so he was always in ams or in the stroller. How cranky was I when I went back to work and he started napping at daycare!
Both of my kids gave up naps around their 2nd birthdays. But then – THEN – they started to go to bed much earlier. So I work 12 1/2 hour days, and they sleep the rest. Or don’t sleep, but that’s neither here nor there. But my point is, I gave up naps to get evenings, and it’s not a bad trade-off.
Also? I am counting the days until #2 starts preschool. September, 2011 is my freedom day, man. I am giddy at the prospect, and it’s still 10 months away.
I can relate to this for a couple reasons. One, I also have wasted and continue to waste, valuable time. Time that I could and should be writing. And, I am filled with regret over all the time I squandered last year when I had a part-time job away from home that required me to do absolutely nothing. I could have been writing. But, I socialized and screwed around on the internet.
I also know what you mean about how intensely the focus shifts to your kid. I like focusing on her because it’s easy and just generally seems what I need to be doing. I don’t have to think beyond it. I just do it.
But, I am starting to get really hard on myself for the fact that I might be losing my own identity and might not be taking care of all my needs.
AND, we’re trying to have another one. So, there’s that.