I thought I’d write blog-posts more often. But then, I thought I’d do a lot of things.

I mean, simply put, I thought I’d paint the bathroom (whose walls have been mostly rough, ugly plaster since we tore down the wallpaper two years ago). I definitely thought I’d have figured out how to stop eating an entire packet of biscuits in one sitting. Thought I’d know at this stage, in my early forties, that when I feel as though I’m literally going mad with emotions verging on hysterical that it might just be because I’m premenstrual, not because I’m actually losing my mind.

And then, you know, I thought that by my forties I’d hopefully have a decent paying job doing something I’m actually interested in and that I’d have a home of my own, rented or mortgaged, not actually living in the house I grew up in with my parents….

*sigh*

I mean, most things seem to get put on hold when you’re a Mum of small kids that’s for sure. The very reason I’m actually writing this is because my little girl has just started playschool. She’s not too keen on it (read: roared her head off for ten minutes one morning after I dropped her off – ‘I want to go to Mama’ -while I sat in the office and my heart tore slowly in half. Once I was sure she had settled, I went to the car and cried solidly all the way home and for most of the rest of the day).

So I’m finally here, after typing up and emailing two invoices for our business, hanging out the clothes to dry (thank God it’s sunny and breezy), scrubbing several orange-stained tshirts and sweaters and putting away various shoes, clothes and toys. And there are a hundred other things I should probably be doing other than this but if I don’t do it now, it will possibly be another five years before I next get to it.

I feel guilty when I use valuable time with zero kid-demands to just read a book, to lie down and rest, to do something I love like reading my astrology books. But I get exhausted when I use valuable time with zero kid-demands to try to stay on top of my endless to do list.

There’s no winning, it’s either exhaustion from the hustle of trying TO DO IT ALL! Or else stress and anxiety from the knowledge that it’s all still there waiting for me while I try to give myself a half our off.

Is there any solution, beyond retreating to a cave and living like a hermit? At least then I’d have no taxes or bookkeeping to do, I’d have no sticky porridge to clean off my kids’ pyjamas, no vomit to scrub off the couch cushions (which my husband didn’t do properly when Bowie was sick and I was working in the restaurant). There’d be no zoning out on Netflix because I was groggy from falling asleep with the kids – yet again – and literally unable to do anything else other than rewatch Schitt’s Creek for the third time.

I’m not sure being a hermit would solve all my problems. For starters, how could I give up all my books? And unless it was a cave in Costa Rica, hermitting would be damn cold. And sure I’d be pining for my kids and their adorable messiness about an hour after settling into my cave so…

Yeah, I could probably live without the taxes though. And the constant laundry.

Life may not be the way I thought it’d be. But that could mostly be due to an aversion to the whole hustle grind culture along with being a Mum to two small kids. There is no time for things unless I use ALL my time which feels every sort of weird and wrong.

Still, I managed to write this. I apologise in advance – there is zero editing going into this post. It just needs to get done!

Till next time. Whenever that is….

Liz