It is eerie how much this resonates with me. I had a breakdown/reckoning about this very subject over the weekend. A few weeks ago, I declared this my “creative girl summer.” I had a series of projects in the works, all of which I felt bubbly, fizzy, overflowing excitement about. Now, just a few weeks into June, I think, “Nope. I cannot. This is not sustainable.” And it’s because I think too often, I jump to seeing creativity as a vocation and not as the other ways in which it can serve a life: play, practice, nourishment, escape. A way to make life feel alive and large. In seeing it simply as a vocation, it feels like it doesn’t give my life the room it needs to breathe, and that is especially true for my motherhood. So I don’t know if “creative girl summer” will just become…summer? But, all I know is, like you said, time is a thief and my kids will be 2 in a few months and I need to do whatever I can to stop it all from feeling like it’s slipping through my fingertips.
i completely relate. revived my substack for a first foray back into creativity. i also miss the newborn stage now that i'm on through to 9 months. some things that feel hard are that naps are short, and the whole day are moments of needing proximity to me. I feel bad for finding that tiring because I know she won’t always need me this way and I’ll miss it someday. i would go back to the newborn stage and savor it but then also wonder if i'm not saving now enough in wanting writing to be a bigger part of my day to day.
As a mom of a one year old baby, I do everything to protect his nap schedule. Nap hours are the only times I could focus on something diligently. I also made peace with little progress. Beautifully written!
This is so beautifully expressed, and so reminiscent of the early years with my babies. There’s always conflict, between rest and productivity, family and externally visible work, contentment and ambition. It’s very hard to be ok with the pause, our society is all about the hustle, the optimal. Maybe it’s ok for mothering to be a sub-optimal phase. I was much better at this with my second and third babies! Somehow having a felt understanding of the shape of the thing gave me a better ability to be within it. I wrote so much poetry in this phase too. It suited the ‘working in the cracks’ nature of early mothering. It was a way to make these big feelings more visible, tangible, meaningful. I wish you peace and contentment and joy in this tricky place 🤗
It is eerie how much this resonates with me. I had a breakdown/reckoning about this very subject over the weekend. A few weeks ago, I declared this my “creative girl summer.” I had a series of projects in the works, all of which I felt bubbly, fizzy, overflowing excitement about. Now, just a few weeks into June, I think, “Nope. I cannot. This is not sustainable.” And it’s because I think too often, I jump to seeing creativity as a vocation and not as the other ways in which it can serve a life: play, practice, nourishment, escape. A way to make life feel alive and large. In seeing it simply as a vocation, it feels like it doesn’t give my life the room it needs to breathe, and that is especially true for my motherhood. So I don’t know if “creative girl summer” will just become…summer? But, all I know is, like you said, time is a thief and my kids will be 2 in a few months and I need to do whatever I can to stop it all from feeling like it’s slipping through my fingertips.
i completely relate. revived my substack for a first foray back into creativity. i also miss the newborn stage now that i'm on through to 9 months. some things that feel hard are that naps are short, and the whole day are moments of needing proximity to me. I feel bad for finding that tiring because I know she won’t always need me this way and I’ll miss it someday. i would go back to the newborn stage and savor it but then also wonder if i'm not saving now enough in wanting writing to be a bigger part of my day to day.
As a mom of a one year old baby, I do everything to protect his nap schedule. Nap hours are the only times I could focus on something diligently. I also made peace with little progress. Beautifully written!
This is so beautifully expressed, and so reminiscent of the early years with my babies. There’s always conflict, between rest and productivity, family and externally visible work, contentment and ambition. It’s very hard to be ok with the pause, our society is all about the hustle, the optimal. Maybe it’s ok for mothering to be a sub-optimal phase. I was much better at this with my second and third babies! Somehow having a felt understanding of the shape of the thing gave me a better ability to be within it. I wrote so much poetry in this phase too. It suited the ‘working in the cracks’ nature of early mothering. It was a way to make these big feelings more visible, tangible, meaningful. I wish you peace and contentment and joy in this tricky place 🤗