Last updated on November 26, 2023
Another late night of trying to balance the homeschooling summer routine, my projects, and some volunteer work.
It’s after 1 a.m. and I’ve been working on the 2021-22 school plans for the girls, organizing long-overdue blog updates, watching movies for AutFest Texas 2021, and hoping that I might some night have time to work on the two autism-related book projects collecting dust.
I’m sure readers and listeners to the podcast are tired of the pandemic parenting complaints. Everyone is tired. Our household isn’t that unique.
Pandemic parenting added stress to every family’s already exhausting routines.
Because of their challenges retaining knowledge and skills, the girls have always needed some summer enrichment. Now, however, we’re doing full days of learning activities with the awareness that we have to manage our expectations. I realize summer school is a necessity for many students during the COVID-19 transition. The girls won’t be far behind peers, just a little behind some classmates.
I’ve tried to be productive, beyond teaching. That hasn’t happened. It takes a lot of energy to assemble daily packets, coach the girls through the work, grade (loosely) their work, and enter data into Excel. Yes, I’m taking assessment seriously even during the summer.
I want to be writing. I’d love to help out on some films in the Austin area. There’s a list of things I’d like to do creatively.
Homeschooling for another year is not something I wanted to be doing.
Like so many parents, I have adjusted my priorities and goals. The girls have, do, and will come first, even as I have to mentally process what I might be giving up of my own professional and creative ambitions.
Every day I tell myself I should be able to better manage my days. If only I had a clear schedule and stuck to it. Surely there’s enough time to prepare mini-lessons, coach the girls, monitor their learning, and pursue my own desires. I find that I reprimand myself for poor time management throughout the day. By 1 or 2 a.m., my internal critic complains that I shouldn’t go to sleep and waste yet more time.
Yes, I start to think of sleep as wasted time. I know I need the sleep, just as we tell the girls they need to sleep well to be productive. But, after 10 hours or more of meeting the needs of the girls, there’s little energy for me.
The girls’ return to school was going to give me back a few hours during the day. I’d write during those hours and pursue creative goals. I’d search for work more aggressively. I had such grand plans for the reclaimed time I anticipated having.
The creative me is fading away, I fear. I’m losing days, weeks, months… maybe more than two years. I had already lost so much time to graduate degrees and dead-end teaching posts that I need this Texas reboot to pay off in some manner.
It’s selfish, I realize, the desire to complete a project or secure full-time work. I try not to dwell on what isn’t likely. We made choices and they were the right choices.
At this time, neither Susan nor I feel safe around other people. We don’t want to work in offices or on school campuses until the girls are vaccinated and the infection rates decline in Texas. Homeschooling is the right choice. I merely need to find ways to work on manuscripts at night and on weekends. I need to carve out time for the creative me.
Having written another moody blog post, I’m going to head for bed. I will then feel guilty for not continuing to work for another hour or two. I’ll run through the list of projects I should have finished. Self-imposed deadlines I should have met. Writing logs I did not enter into my calendar… because I wasn’t writing.
I look around and see businesses returning to normal, despite rising COVID-19 rates since late June. I see full parking lots when I run errands. Maskless people without any fear are out and about, while I’m still in anxious mode.
Maybe you’re among the fortunate, able to calculate risk and move forward with a return to normal.
Normal. Pre-pandemic normal. Maybe not exactly as things were, but that “normal” in which we didn’t worry that any sniffle or cough was a coronavirus variant.
I want to have dinner out with Susan. I want to go to the bookstores on a regular basis. I want to browse shops and sit in cafes.
Among my favorite pre-pandemic routines was sitting in one of the cafes or diners with my MacBook Pro, a pencil, some pens, and a legal pad. I’d work on projects while drinking tea and eating a bit.
I want to be a great parent. I’m trying to be better at parenting. However, I also miss having a few hours during which the girls weren’t my focus. They demand attention, as most young children do. They’re still at ages that require constant supervision.
Maybe if the girls were a bit older and more self-directed, I could work on projects while they did schoolwork in the afternoons. We could have two or three hours of homeschooling instruction and guided practice. I’d still be available to help the girls, but I’d be making progress on my creative projects after lunch… instead of trying to be productive after midnight.
I do envy the homeschooling parents who claim they spend no more than three hours in teacher mode daily. I fantasize about reclaiming seven or eight hours for myself. Such thoughts are followed by guilt and shame for not being a more dedicated parent.
When I was young, there were calls for women to “find themselves” outside the role of “Mother.” I thought it was silly that women needed to be given permission to follow their interests outside parenthood. Now, I appreciate how easy it is to lose yourself in the role of Mommy or Daddy.
I needed to vent, yet again, because this has been a difficult 18 months or so. I feel like a lousy parent and a failure as a creator.
During the pandemic, we are all doing the best we can.