Common complaint time: I feel I have no (ok, to be fair probably just little) time in my life to do just whatever I want. Let me clarify, because that sounds so bleak. 90% of what I do with my son on a daily basis is “whatever I want” since we have very few responsibilities at this point. We play in rivers, hunt snakes, do puzzles, go swimming, and so much more. So this is not a complaint that I have no fun. Today I find myself considering creative and bigger picture time. Think more along the lines of having a personal hobby.

I sneak in time at night for meditation and quiet reflection. This has becoming increasingly important for me but I’m usually going through it exhausted from a long day. Let’s not try counting how often I fall asleep during that meditation. While my days aren’t nonstop tasks, realistically if I am trying to accomplish something other than household tasks, I’m being interrupted every few minutes. Sometimes the requests are bigger “Make me lunch!” And other times they’re just a request for attention, “Did you know that snowy owls are predators of lemmings?” No, I did not know that.

One thing I’ve learned more about myself being a stay at home mom is my brain’s struggle to jump from big picture thinking to execution. Back in the office I used to have to block off chunks of quiet uninterrupted time for strategic or creative thinking. It really takes a whole mental shift for me that I have to set up for myself. Unfortunately, five year olds don’t respect the “unavailable” time indicated in my calendar.

I just finished the book Finding Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World. The title is pretty self-explanatory so I won’t spend too much time summarizing. Like many “self-help” style books, it was heavy on concepts that were not new but important to be reminded of, especially in this new phase of life. I never had to carve out time for myself when living alone or traveling overseas. Even early married life had quite a bit of down time to follow other interests. Either alone or often together finding something new to explore. As a parent from birth to preschool life, though, has not been the easiest to navigate for those other parts of myself.

The main frustration I had with this book (and honestly, also a weakness featuring heavily in her first book, Fair Play, as well) was the assumption regarding the life of the non primary caregiving partner. Often the spouse was seen as having and taking for granted a large amount of free time themself. There were far too many examples along the lines of husbands taking off for all day golfing adventures. I understand the encouragement in those situations to advocate for equal time and consideration. I’m all for that. But in my case I have a spouse working essentially two full time jobs who hasn’t had an hour for himself in what seems like months at this point? Can’t we even get one teeny tiny example for us? We’re both giving it our all here.

Ok, I get it. An author can’t cover everything. And even so, would have probably default to a privileged option like “hire a nanny for a few days a week.” Our case may not have fit her premise anyway though. When you are at this point, I think it comes down to priorities. Life is pretty complex. I hope we’ve all figured that out by now. With the finite time we have, we want quality one-on-one time with our child, family time with the three of us, one-on-one time as parents for the good of our marriage, and also individual time, which our child rebels against. Why play alone when playing with parents is so much fun? This is just considering “free” time too, not even time for logistics like accomplishing projects around the house that need to be done together or individually. Because we really can’t classify putting up a shelf as “leisure time.”

I’ll temper my expectations a bit and recognize that one or two books cannot solve all these problems for all people. One concept that did have big impact for me was the reminder that being a martyr is not the highest form of love. For now I can’t write the book with all the answers for all the people either. I probably couldn’t even write the book with all the answers just for myself yet to be honest. I just keep trying to balance all the time priorities while watching for which are start to fall low.

Most of this leaves me thinking how I don’t know how others do it. Multiple kids, working at home, full time working moms, caring for older parents, going to the gym, investing in volunteer time… People are amazing. But also probably feeling a bit unbalanced as well. So a little extra love and compassion for us all today.