The Winter Break Scaries
Originally this week’s blog post was going to be about holiday minimalism. Or at the very least my intended pursuit of said holiday minimalism (which, if I’m being honest has been only a partially successful pursuit). But then, in the midst of all the seasonal ridiculousness, it occurred to me that next week is basically the last week this month that I will be able to sit down at my computer and work for several uninterrupted hours in a row. And it’s not even the whole week at that.
This is what every parent dreads: winter break. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to some downtime with my family, but for some reason my schedule and project to-do list has not gotten the memo that I should be winding down.
I’ve been waking up in anxiety sweats every night with that to-do list running through my brain. Top of it: FINISH A BOOK. Yes, you read that right, I (along with my co-author) must finish a book by the end of this year. A book, I might add, was technically supposed to be finished in September, but thankfully got pushed up. We’re getting to a point where we (kind of) see a light at the end of the tunnel, albeit a dim one, but it feels that every day something new crops up that we need to address (and, thus, the need for more uninterrupted hours at a computer).
If I didn’t have a child—and wasn’t also the parent whose flexible schedule allows her to be “off” with the child during school breaks—I’d have many more of those uninterrupted hours of work time making the anxiety a bit more dulled.
My dear sweet child, whom I love and adore more than anything in this world, is a great human being, but he is a terrible co-worker. I will do my best to get everything done before the day he gets off. But I know that I won’t and that I will be waking up very early in the morning and putting him in front of a screen way more often than I’d like to get even a few extra minutes to plow through that to-do list. I’m not excited for winter break.
This whole rant-blog is to say that, while I am deep, deep in that holiday anxiety, I am not alone. If the pandemic didn’t teach us anything it’s that moms are deeply in crisis, particularly when it comes to caring for children and having a career. Moms have left the workforce in droves over the past year and we are not doing okay. It just really highlights the whole fiasco that is our support system for families in this country. And as we speak they are working on the Build Back Better bill in Congress which includes provisions that will hopefully help women get back into the workforce (specifically, paid family leave, subsidized childcare, eldercare provisions, and the child tax credit). In the middle of my own personal anxiety storm, I think it’s important to remember that we all need to be fighting for this kind of support for all people in society.
And you can let your senators* know to pass this damn thing ASAP!
*Especially if you live in West Virginia because don’t even get me started on Manchin’s terrible reasons for being skeptical of such an important bill.