One of the hardest things with active parenting is that you’re usually robbed of the hours when you’re at your most alert and creative. 

In the morning, there’s the effort of getting the kids breakfasted and ready for school, doing the school run, then doing whatever laundry/washing-up/tidying tasks might remain in the domestic circuit before starting work.

In the afternoon and evening there’s the effort of collecting the kids from school, cooking dinner, helping them with homework if necessary, and doing the washing-up and laundry. Maybe there are pets to look after as well. 

Even with both parents contributing, and perhaps especially in the absence of any extended family to help share the burden, it’s a backbreaking domestic workload. 

With work consuming the core hours, you’re left with the ends of the day (either very early in the morning, before the routine starts, or very late at night, after the routine is completed) for yourself. Me-time is compressed into those tiny moments before they wake up and after they go to bed. That’s the time left to write a few emails, manage whatever extra-curricular responsibilities you’ve taken on, and who knows, maybe string together a few sentences for an increasingly occasional blog posting. And that’s assuming that you don’t have a job which might demand you give up even those frugal moments. 

Like a species pushed to the edges of its habitat by an encroaching newcomer, parents can find respite only in the most inhospitable times of day, the moments when you’d rather be in bed, or relaxing. Or sleeping. 

Because you’re always tired. Parents are invariably time-poor and sleep-deprived, and it sometimes seems that the only way to claim more time for yourself is to drain that precious resource even further. Eke some moments before sunrise or after sunset. Find a few minutes before the kids wake, or after they’ve gone to sleep.

It’s a particularly cruel sentence for creative activities, which benefit most from a sense of rest and time. These require more of the brain’s system2, the rational and energy-intensive part, the part that’s usually worn out from work and the cognitive load of keeping track of all those household tasks and figuring out what recipes you’re going to be cooking next week.

But like everything with parenting, you come up against what seems impossible, and then you adapt. In time, you accept that things take longer than they did before. Your friends learn that you won’t respond as quickly as you once did. You get used to books taking longer to read. And if you’re a habitual writer, you write when you can.

Things slowly get better in their own time. And until then, you dwell at the ends of the day.

P.S. For regular readers – bear with me! Writing time is very limited right now, but the ideas for postings are as plentiful as ever… 🙂