yet another case of ~doing the most~
what can I say? doing the most is what I do best 💁🏾♀️
Wednesday Wisdom
“I can achieve my wildest creative dreams going slow and resting often.” ~ @sabinethegem
Morning Musings
Earlier this year—while helping me care for Violet during a week of solo parenting—my sister introduced her to the phrase “doing the most,” as she was, in fact, doing the most during dinner at Chili’s (as toddlers are wont to do).
Fast forward to several months later and yet another week of solo parenting and well, let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Hi, it’s me. I’m the tree. 🌲
Fresh off a lovely week in St. Lucia with Jeff to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary, I started the week with the most ambitious to-do list, as I’m wont to do:
three meetings
grocery run
laundry
interview for a story
book coaching session
make dinner before daycare pickup/swim lessons
put together clothes Violet’s outgrown for a couple of moms in the local Facebook group
daycare pickup/swim lessons
eat dinner
bathtime
bedtime routine
go through the 1k+ emails in my inbox & 50+ text messages I missed while I was mostly offline last week
write this newsletter
order cupcakes for Violet’s birthday
book Christmas flights
And, as the Universe would have it, absolutely NOTHING went according to plan. I thought I could multitask while making dinner and pack our swim bag, respond to emails and write this newsletter. If Morgan Freeman were narrating this scene in my biopic, he would say, “She would soon find out that she could not.”
You know that meme that says “She believed she could, but she was really tired, so she didn’t”? That was me, except I believed I could, but I was overwhelmed and I tried really hard, but alas, I was defeated.
Let’s start with dinner shall we? (Note: the emails remain unread and I’m writing this at 11:39 pm, approximately 90 minutes after Violet finally went to sleep and I revenge bedtime procrastinated/doomscrolled for 20 minutes on Twitter before finally showering). Anywho, I was absentmindedly dumping the rigatoni in the pot, somehow missed the pot and the first handful or so of noodles fell on the floor.
Then, I remembered I forgot to salt the water, so I grabbed the little thingie with the kosher salt that Jeff swears by and a HUGE clump fell into the water. I thought it would be okay, but that was the saltiest water I’d ever tasted and it was not okay.
I abandoned ship and decided I’d figure out a Plan B for dinner on the way to pickup. Then I got in the garage and my key fob was being wonky, rendering me pseduo-stranded for five minutes.
And then once we finally make it to swim, all of the changing rooms are taken and naturally this is when V has to use the potty, so I have to hustle up three flights of steps in flip-flops and a towel with a 30-something-pound toddler in tow.
It was at this moment I decided f*ck it, we’ll eat out (cooking is NOT my specialty, it stresses me out. Jeff is our resident chef). So we go to sweetgreen to order a Harvest Bowl and Little Harvet, and…they’re out of wild rice. Now, at this point, I feel like crying. No, it’s not the end of the world, I just wanted something to go right. But I pull it together and we go on to have a perfectly fine dinner and V is none the wiser.
Coincidentally enough, when I was in a live teaching session with
earlier in the day, we talked about realistic goals and expectations. It was very unrealistic of me to think I could get all—even half!—of my to-do list done today.I was doing the most with the least.
The real kicker is that when Jenni asked us what’s the ONE thing we absolutely needed to get done today I knew mine was making dinner. In fact, another writer mom was making dinner before pickup/swim while we were on the call. Clearly this mom has her sh*t together, I thought during my dinner debacle, and I do not.
But then I quickly reframed (shoutout to therapy!), channeled my inner Mariah Carey and reminded myself: “I’m doing the best I can with what I got!”
Thinking on my feet has never been my strong suit, but something about parenting (idk, the whole keeping a tiny human alive part?) really helps build that muscle. A year ago—two years into postpartum depression and anxiety and not yet medicated—a day like today would’ve sent me down a dark, deep spiral.
But, thanks to the gift of time, experience, therapy and Zoloft, I’m getting better at giving myself grace. We’re human. We make mistakes. Sometimes we do too much. And if you, like me, are guilty of always doing the most, perhaps it’s time we take a back and, as I so eloquently said in the group chat during Jenni’s session, slow the f*ck down.
Interestingly, I kept telling myself to slow down while I was making the pasta. I knew from past experience that when I’m rushing, whatever I’m doing tends to take longer than if I were to just fully focus on the task at hand. So if you need a permission slip to monotask instead of multitask, consider this letter that. And let’s all collectively agree to aim for more simplified and realistic to-do lists instead of constantly doing the most (and frying our nervous systems in the process). 🫶🏾
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I, too, had a cooking mishap this week(!) On Monday I cooked a frittata with ingredients we got from our CSA, then ran out to pick up my youngest from travel soccer. After our frittata dinner, I was working on dinner for the next night, since I had to take my oldest to a college info session. I put a tray of tofu, squash and peppers in the oven, left the kitchen, sat down on a comfy chair to write my weekly newsletter (to my community education council)....and I totally forgot that I had food cooking in the oven. An hour later, my husband asks me if I was cooking something in the oven. Woops!
So relatable!