Keeping Up

As the calendar keeps moving further and further into the fourth quarter, I find myself trying harder and harder to keep up.  I feel like I’m getting less done and doing everything half assed.  I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the feeling sure sucks.  One of my working mommy friends (there’s a new acronym for you Barb, WMFs) told me while I was pregnant that being a working mother meant feeling like you’re not doing either one very well.  At the time I could relate to an extent, but now that I’m wrapping up my first year of motherhood, that notion is up front and center.  If I can’t keep up after one year, where will I be in ten or twenty years?  I try not to think about that, and for now I’m focusing on the remainder of this year.  My goal is simply to keep up, and it has nothing to do with the Joneses.

At my day job, we’re a fourth quarter busines, and so we’re in the crux of controlled chaos.  Take normal chaos and add the current state of the economy, and it takes the tension level to a whole new category.  It’s stressful, and it doesn’t help that I don’t have the time (or desire) to spend my time after hours catching up, so every day I come to my office with a bigger pile than the day before.

Then there’s the day to day job keeping up with laundry, groceries, baby, and trying to work my creative muscle by getting ready for a couple holidays shows where I’ll be selling my cards.  Plus, this year, for the first time, I have Matteo’s birthday party to plan for.

Somehow, amidst this chaos, I’m supposed to track my eating and my spending, lose weight, take a shower, dry my hair and keep my sanity.  Overall, I have resigned to the fact that I will never catch up.  I imagine this feeling is shared amongst other working mothers, stay at home mothers, and women who aren’t mothers.  The difference that I’ve noticed, however, is not that I’m not totally keeping up, but at how far I fall behind.