Bruce’s sermon series on busy lives and Dr. Swensen’s book, Margin, resonated with me. I have recently reclaimed my margin (see Derrick’s post for more information on the concept of margin/overload). I stopped overload “cold turkey” through a circumstance outside of my control, and it has been a huge learning experience.
To fully explain, I have to describe my schedule until as an overload junkie. At the height of this phase, I was at work by 8 AM every morning. Each evening, I had a dance rehearsal, ballet class, yoga, or a board meeting to attend. There were also commutes around the Bay Area mixed into this schedule. It was rare for me to get home before 9 PM. On Friday evening, I was exhausted, falling asleep on the couch after dinner. The weekends were also taken up with rehearsals and homework. On Sunday evening, I would prepare myself for another race at a break-neck pace through the coming week. This situation grew out of two forces that drove me when I left graduate school:
- I wanted to be a modern dancer.
- I needed to eat.
Dance is a field that is both highly competitive and poorly compensated, with few opportunities for full-time work. For about two years, I juggled a round of gigs that included teaching, choreography, rehearsals, performance, and part-time administrative work. I tired of constantly chasing after jobs and juggling a schedule that sometimes required me to work in three different cities in one day.
As a “saner” solution, I took a day job coordinating an arts education program. It was supposed to be something that I could do during the day, leaving evenings and weekends open for dance. After one semester, I dropped my Saturday teaching gig, but continued a heavy schedule of rehearsals. I couldn’t let myself cut back – to be any good in dance, you have to dance a lot, ideally every day. And reducing these activities also meant that I would have to admit that my hoped-for career was actually. . . a hobby! Meanwhile, through staff attrition and a knack for managing administrative trivia, my junior level coordinator position had morphed over 3 years into a senior level position, which required a mental commitment outside of the normal work hours, as well as attendance at evening meetings and events.
What suffered in the squeeze between my day career and my dance avocation were me and the people I loved. I resented the demands that my choreographer or employers made; little inconveniences at work irritated me greatly. I forgot my dad’s birthday – two years in a row. I didn’t mind so much that my husband was out of town a lot, because it meant that I didn’t have to feel guilty about never being at home. My good friend knew that if she wanted to see me, we’d have to schedule a date weeks in advance.
When I became pregnant last year, I hardly slackened my pace. I did have to stop practicing the acrobatics my dance company specialized in, but I kept the same work schedule. When I was 6 months pregnant, I traveled to Chicago in the middle of a blizzard for a meeting. In the month before Seth was born, I pulled at least two “all-nighters” to meet work deadlines. The weekend before he was born, I spent all Sunday afternoon and evening working on a project. On Monday, I marshaled my poor colleagues to help me collate an enormous pile of documents and drove them down to San Jose an hour before a deadline. On Tuesday evening, I went into labor, 5 weeks early.
On Wednesday, Seth was born and my world was turned upside-down. Time passed in a surreal, melted-clock sort of way. To-do lists were no longer critical. Hard deadlines no longer mattered. Instead, the rhythms of caring for a newborn were cyclical and repetitive. They did not obey any schedule. Even Seth’s sleeping patterns were at first completely random. We were on “baby time.”
Baby time is feeding when the baby is hungry or postponing an errand because he has finally gone down for a nap. It’s about sitting still to nurse, and being ok in that stillness. Another strange aspect of “baby time” is how it affects one’s perception of the world. Scot and I sometimes sit playing with Seth, forgetting that an hour has passed. Baby time is being in the present without looking for what is coming next. It’s about noticing the minutiae of life – a ceiling fan or a button – that suddenly seems new and strange.
After my initial shock at the re-arrangement of my world, I rediscovered the margin that I had given up years ago. Our house, which previously functioned as the place where we kept our stuff, feels like a home. I’ve been able to reconnect with friends, and I no longer feel like each day is a sprint. (Now, it’s more like a marathon). I was able to reconnect to myself, too, thinking about things I haven’t had the emotional space to consider in years. It’s one of the blessings that Seth’s birth has given me: my inner life.
As Seth gets older, he will be engaging with the world more. In a family where we will have three schedules to juggle, there’s the potential for us to be more crazy-busy than ever. I am going to try to resist this, maintaining the space to have “baby time” when we need it, even when we no longer officially have a baby.
Date: Friday, February 23
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