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gives me 1 hour to squeeze in a workout between now and that work meeting.</p><p id="3642">But I really want to write a Medium article griping about my lack of “me time” as well. In my defense, writing is part of my non-existent self-care routine so I try to make time for that as well.</p><p id="75bd">So here we are. I’m sitting on my bedroom floor, leaning against a Spider-Man pillow propped up on the bedframe. My friends are on a text chain about how much motherhood sucks right now. I have papers, agendas, and things to return all around me on the carpet because the desk I bought at the start of the pandemic is tiny since I stupidly thought it would only last 3 months. I’m surrounded by chocolate wrappers and a bowl of vitamins that I vowed to take today. I technically vowed to take them two days ago but I promise, I’ll swallow them today.</p><p id="c623">I can’t sustain this.</p><p id="8b69">Something has to change. It <i>has</i> to.</p><p id="376b">Back in the days of yore, aka, Before Covid, keeping a schedule was easy. I kept my job stuff in my work’s Outlook calendar and anything outside of that was in a shared family Google calendar.</p><p id="5842">Once Covid hit, that didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t share my work calendar with my <a href="https://readmedium.com/divorce-and-separation-bring-awkward-moments-c3e52f22826b">quasi-ex-husband</a> and I had to keep track of the kids’ schedules when before, anything that happened between 8 am and 6 pm wasn’t on me to micromanage daily. I had to go analog.</p><p id="c447">Since last year, I’ve been using a traditional paper planner. Something I can easily carry around the house and look at with a simple glance, without having to open yet another app.</p><p id="d0b5">I stepped it up this month and created a <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2018/11/02/so-you-want-get-bullet-journaling-where-do-you-start/">Bullet Journal</a>. If you’re not in the know, it’s a blank notebook where you draw in boxes and calendars instead of using a standard planner. I Googled the hell out of it and became overwhelmed with “rules” and proper indexing. At first, it was just a way to pass the time while bored in meetings (<i>anyone can color boxes in a notebook on a Zoom call</i>) but I’ve realized it’s essential if you want to carve out your own goals while also juggling time with the needs of others.</p><p id="e870">Instead of a standard planner that has boxes for appointments and a general “To Do” box, mine is customized per week with <i>exactly</i> what I want to keep track of in the way I want it tracked. I have a box to write in the recipes I want to make that week. I have a box for goals, which are subsets of bigger goals I wrote at the start of the month. I have a box just for the crap I need to deal with next week but without a specific due date. There are little tracker boxes for the daily tasks I’d like to complete, like making sure I take my damn vitamins because I subsist on garbage the rest of the day.</p><p id="b46a">Using online templates to build the bullet journal forced me to identify the goals that matter to me. The ones that I push aside because of my family’s needs. Now it’s all there, on paper, and I force myself to carve out ways to make them happen.</p><p id="6d0b">My bullet journal has become a contract for how I want to live my life.</p><p id="7988">It also brings me a tiny bit of happiness because I used a <a href="https://organizedpotato.wordpress.com/2017/07/07/free-planner-printable-powerpuff-girls/">Powerpuff Girls bullet journal template</a> for next week and at this point, I’ll take anything that brings me small moments of joy.</p><p id="1658">Here are the ways I’m making “Me Time” happen:</p><ul><li>Identifying my goals. If I say that I’m going to finish a particular book by a certain day, it becomes less of a “nice to have” and more of a “this is a contract I made to myself and my family can suck it” kind of deal. These aren’t negotiable any more.</li><li><a href="https://readmedium.com/save-money-like-a-ninja-42d3eb3be3de">I’m cheap as all hell</a> but having a cleaning person come every two weeks is mandatory. I’m lucky that I have the luxury to afford it, but I’m also wearing decrepitly-old socks from 2005 right now so I’m c

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utting corners in other ways to make it happen.</li><li>I no longer feel guilty not spending time with my kids. We’ve been under the same damn roof for almost a year. While I don’t like turning them down when they ask me to play with them, I’ve learned that it’s important that they see their parents prioritizing themselves and having their own interests. I can play Monopoly…but first, I need to work out. They can wait.</li><li>Follow a rule of “if it takes less than 60 seconds to do, do it now”. I often lagged on the short, quick tasks because they seemed minor. Then they’d build up. Now, I can look at a bill and think, “I can pay that online in under one minute” or “I can quickly replace the trash bag”. It’s quick enough that it doesn’t take away from the things I enjoy doing but also doesn’t bog me down later when I have a solid chunk of time to myself.</li><li>While I kept online grocery shopping to a minimum for most of this pandemic because of cost and my pickiness, I’m relying on it much more. I’ve learned which brands I prefer from Amazon Fresh compared to their Whole Foods delivery. Snacks can be delivered from Target, which also brings my shopping cart over $35 to get free delivery. This allows me to do double-duty grocery shopping while doing a family movie night or during a work Zoom call. (<i>Yes, I find work calls to be generally useless but I manage to make that time productive to free up my personal time</i>.)</li></ul><p id="18db">Find your mandatory “Me Time” window and unapologetically demand it. While there are ways to shave more time in a day, I’m done tiptoeing around the needs of my family to forego my own interests and health. If that means my kids are screaming at each other, then they can <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)">Battle Royale it out</a> if I’m in the middle of working on a personal goal. If that means helping them with their homework when it’s convenient for me and not based on their mood, then so be it.</p><p id="59ce">I’m done being the martyr mother. No one is giving us a medal for skipping a workout because our <a href="https://readmedium.com/separated-but-living-together-479ec23e31d4">quasi-ex-husbands</a> can’t figure out how to cook rice.</p><p id="cb65">Will this mentality last forever? Maybe not. But much like everything else in life, I’m just trying to get through this phase while death-gripping the remains of my sanity. For now, this is my strategy.</p><div id="c22f" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/negotiating-with-your-separated-ex-about-dating-fb9fcd1dafa0"> <div> <div> <h2>Negotiating With Your Separated Ex About Dating</h2> <div><h3>I present my case, Your Honor.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*8IgBiUzeX-TgKQnRGFUchw.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="0dbe" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/how-do-your-friendships-change-after-divorce-5a97f6f101ef"> <div> <div> <h2>How Do Your Friendships Change After Divorce?</h2> <div><h3>I’m not prepared at all.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*Pofvh6q_X92aMiZ2)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="5472" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/weird-things-im-doing-for-self-care-44bc02216516"> <div> <div> <h2>Weird Things I’m Doing for Self-Care</h2> <div><h3>They aren’t spa days and nightly glasses of wine.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*8Q4q9OUYEeaJL0lF)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

Prioritizing “Me Time” When You’re Stuck Inside With Your Family

My current life hacks to save my sanity.

Y’all know that mom is dying for a glass of wine and silence (Photo by CDC on Unsplash)

It’s hard being a mom. Yes, before anyone comes after me, being a father is hard work too blah blah blah. But the mental load and extra work typically fall on the mother. There are studies on it. Google it if you don’t believe me.

And then Covid came along.

Any little bit of respite we had went out the window. If you had help from grandparents, they had to stay away for the sake of their health. Schools transitioned to a virtual model so not only did we lose the few hours the kids were out of the house, but we also took on yet another job of playing teacher. Working from home sounded like a dream until you discovered you were simultaneously opening a childcare facility (the one thing you avoided by being a working mother).

I’m interrupted while I write this article to check a text from another mom friend. She ranted that her parents were over, she had to cook dinner for 10 people, her daughter dropped her dinner on the floor, and my friend is having a mental breakdown after screaming “Jesus Christ!” to her entire family. “I’ve just fucking had it after a year of this shit. I’m so sick and tired of cleaning up after everyone every day. I’m exhausted.”

The timing of this text isn’t coincidental. This is how moms feel all the time right now.

We have nothing left to give.

One common theme I’ve found among my mom friends is that we don’t go to bed at a decent time anymore. Surrounded and never alone, having the house to ourselves is the only time we have to decompress. We know we’ll regret it in the morning. And yet here we are, night after night, staying up to do dumb stuff.

And yes, it’s really dumb stuff. I’m not putting away laundry at 2 am. I’m watching TikTok videos about a duck who likes ice water from Dunkin Donuts and…actually, I have no idea what else I watch. Sometimes I log into work and finish the things I didn’t get done during the day. Scratch that; sometimes, I log into work because it’s the first time I’ve logged into work at all that day and I’d like to stay employed.

Last night, I was up because my son was sick every few hours. I hopped in the shower before my cleaning people arrived as they do twice a month to save my sanity. While they were upstairs in my bedroom, which is also my home office, I read a book on my kindle with my children arguing about Lego Harry Potter on the Switch. After helping my daughter connect to her Zoom class, I passed out on my bed for two hours.

You have to be damn tired to sleep through a first-grade Zoom class. I dreamt that I hooked up with a hot guy in my friend’s bathroom but we couldn’t finish because her 7-year-old daughter came home and interrupted us.

Even in my dreams, I can’t get any privacy for the things I enjoy.

“Crap, I need to work out” I tell myself. I’ve been trying to work out at 11 pm but it’s not ideal. Checking my work email, I see that I’ve got a meeting at 6 pm. As a parent, you know that dinnertime kicks off The Witching Hour for children; there is nothing productive that can be done between 6 pm and their bedtime, which is all kinds of screwed up thanks to Covid.

Cool, that gives me 1 hour to squeeze in a workout between now and that work meeting.

But I really want to write a Medium article griping about my lack of “me time” as well. In my defense, writing is part of my non-existent self-care routine so I try to make time for that as well.

So here we are. I’m sitting on my bedroom floor, leaning against a Spider-Man pillow propped up on the bedframe. My friends are on a text chain about how much motherhood sucks right now. I have papers, agendas, and things to return all around me on the carpet because the desk I bought at the start of the pandemic is tiny since I stupidly thought it would only last 3 months. I’m surrounded by chocolate wrappers and a bowl of vitamins that I vowed to take today. I technically vowed to take them two days ago but I promise, I’ll swallow them today.

I can’t sustain this.

Something has to change. It has to.

Back in the days of yore, aka, Before Covid, keeping a schedule was easy. I kept my job stuff in my work’s Outlook calendar and anything outside of that was in a shared family Google calendar.

Once Covid hit, that didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t share my work calendar with my quasi-ex-husband and I had to keep track of the kids’ schedules when before, anything that happened between 8 am and 6 pm wasn’t on me to micromanage daily. I had to go analog.

Since last year, I’ve been using a traditional paper planner. Something I can easily carry around the house and look at with a simple glance, without having to open yet another app.

I stepped it up this month and created a Bullet Journal. If you’re not in the know, it’s a blank notebook where you draw in boxes and calendars instead of using a standard planner. I Googled the hell out of it and became overwhelmed with “rules” and proper indexing. At first, it was just a way to pass the time while bored in meetings (anyone can color boxes in a notebook on a Zoom call) but I’ve realized it’s essential if you want to carve out your own goals while also juggling time with the needs of others.

Instead of a standard planner that has boxes for appointments and a general “To Do” box, mine is customized per week with exactly what I want to keep track of in the way I want it tracked. I have a box to write in the recipes I want to make that week. I have a box for goals, which are subsets of bigger goals I wrote at the start of the month. I have a box just for the crap I need to deal with next week but without a specific due date. There are little tracker boxes for the daily tasks I’d like to complete, like making sure I take my damn vitamins because I subsist on garbage the rest of the day.

Using online templates to build the bullet journal forced me to identify the goals that matter to me. The ones that I push aside because of my family’s needs. Now it’s all there, on paper, and I force myself to carve out ways to make them happen.

My bullet journal has become a contract for how I want to live my life.

It also brings me a tiny bit of happiness because I used a Powerpuff Girls bullet journal template for next week and at this point, I’ll take anything that brings me small moments of joy.

Here are the ways I’m making “Me Time” happen:

Identifying my goals. If I say that I’m going to finish a particular book by a certain day, it becomes less of a “nice to have” and more of a “this is a contract I made to myself and my family can suck it” kind of deal. These aren’t negotiable any more.
I’m cheap as all hell but having a cleaning person come every two weeks is mandatory. I’m lucky that I have the luxury to afford it, but I’m also wearing decrepitly-old socks from 2005 right now so I’m cutting corners in other ways to make it happen.
I no longer feel guilty not spending time with my kids. We’ve been under the same damn roof for almost a year. While I don’t like turning them down when they ask me to play with them, I’ve learned that it’s important that they see their parents prioritizing themselves and having their own interests. I can play Monopoly…but first, I need to work out. They can wait.
Follow a rule of “if it takes less than 60 seconds to do, do it now”. I often lagged on the short, quick tasks because they seemed minor. Then they’d build up. Now, I can look at a bill and think, “I can pay that online in under one minute” or “I can quickly replace the trash bag”. It’s quick enough that it doesn’t take away from the things I enjoy doing but also doesn’t bog me down later when I have a solid chunk of time to myself.
While I kept online grocery shopping to a minimum for most of this pandemic because of cost and my pickiness, I’m relying on it much more. I’ve learned which brands I prefer from Amazon Fresh compared to their Whole Foods delivery. Snacks can be delivered from Target, which also brings my shopping cart over $35 to get free delivery. This allows me to do double-duty grocery shopping while doing a family movie night or during a work Zoom call. (Yes, I find work calls to be generally useless but I manage to make that time productive to free up my personal time.)

Find your mandatory “Me Time” window and unapologetically demand it. While there are ways to shave more time in a day, I’m done tiptoeing around the needs of my family to forego my own interests and health. If that means my kids are screaming at each other, then they can Battle Royale it out if I’m in the middle of working on a personal goal. If that means helping them with their homework when it’s convenient for me and not based on their mood, then so be it.

I’m done being the martyr mother. No one is giving us a medal for skipping a workout because our quasi-ex-husbands can’t figure out how to cook rice.

Will this mentality last forever? Maybe not. But much like everything else in life, I’m just trying to get through this phase while death-gripping the remains of my sanity. For now, this is my strategy.