Workaholism | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Workaholism

4Mar

Now We Are Six

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

The girls’ school called me this morning to pick up my newly minted six-year-old, caught in a rackety upsweep of fever. I was barely through the entryway before Natalie wrapped herself around me. “I want to go home,” she whispered, eyes drooping onto flushed cheeks. “Of course, kiddo; let’s get you home.”

Mothering hadn’t factored into my plans for the next few hours. I had just left work, and I had lesson plans to go over, an editing project to finish, and mountains of both laundry and correspondence to scale. I was also chewing on an upcoming writing deadline I’ve been hoping to meet, and the house needed disaster relief aid after yesterday’s birthday party in which glitter featured heavily. Just in case I had time left over (ha) and was wondering how to spend it, I could always put a little thought into birthday party #2 fast approaching on Sunday. Oh, and Natalie’s presents should probably be wrapped at some point, considering her special day is was yesterday. Also, if truth be admitted, I wasn’t feeling too hot myself and wouldn’t have turned down a nap.

However, tomato soup, fairy tales, and plenty of unrushed snuggle time were clearly called for. Natalie didn’t require any brain power or motivation from me, just the number one remedy used by mamas worldwide: love (give or take a cool hand to the forehead every three minutes). She is growing up so quickly, that girl—sugar and spice making way for vocabulary and art—and she has her own trajectory now outside of my arms. It’s incredible to have grown-up conversations with my wide-eyed baby, read long-winded books to her, give her scissors and a workspace and let her go to town, giggle over shared jokes… but I so miss the days of rocking her to sleep that my heart squeezes the breath from my lungs. So while I might not have planned to spend today burrowed under blankets and storybooks, I can think of worse ways to celebrate a girl whose years are rushing by faster than time itself.

Ti voglio bene, Natalina mia.

10Jun

My Squalor Comes With Binder Tabs

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Dust bunnies are procreating under the night stand. Ants march unhindered into the kitchen to nosh on leftovers. The stack of bills on my desk keeps casting reproachful glances in my direction. The wastebasket overfloweth, and my legs are starting to resemble cacti. Welcome to trip planning mode at our house!

Our Scotland-bound campingstravaganza (affectionately nicknamed Highland Fling) is set to start in just two short weeks, and my brain suddenly can’t be bothered with technicalities like bills and housework, not when there are tent pitches to reserve at Loch Ness. I love this kind of organized daydreaming—researching locations, reviewing accommodations, planning meals, compiling packing lists. However, it’s not fast work, and I’m already up to my ears in neglected everyday demands. (Some of them look perilously close to throwing tantrums.)

I just wanted to explain why the blogosphere will need to carry on without me for a bit. Also how the quantity of dust came to be greater than that of all life forms in the house. I’ll remedy the abject squalor situation, I promise, but it may have to wait until we’re back. The castles of Inverness await my search engine command!

17Nov

The Pursuit of Cobwebs

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Last Friday, I scheduled my day to the minute in a desperate attempt to manage the ever-growing piles of more on my task list. I got the laundry sorted and washed and hung and folded—75 minutes total. I unpacked the suitcases from a week of overnight trips—35 minutes. I schlepped armloads of misplaced toys to the girls’ room, picture books back on shelves, plastic pineapples back in the pink bin—20 minutes. I cooked lunch—20. I washed the windows—30. I prepared side dishes for the next day’s Thanksgiving bash—90. I replied to an important e-mail—25. I transcribed piano chords in preparation for Sunday’s stage fright—50. I cleaned the kitchen, twice—25 and 15. I took care of the girls as practically as possible since every moment counted, and I kept my hands occupied with busy work during my hour of “down time” with Dan. I did not enjoy a single damn minute of that day. (I’m sure my family didn’t either.)

The weekend was too busy for me to process more than the immediate needs of each moment, but this Monday has been an empty four-lane highway on which I find myself… lost. No idea how to enjoy myself now that I have a little leeway. It feels like I have an eating disorder when it comes to time management… starving myself for relaxation and then binging on it, restlessly, resenting myself equally both ways. Of one thing I am sure: This is no way to live.

Not being able to marinate in my daughters’ scrumptious smallness because the house is cluttered? Not venturing more than a longing glance into the glorious, leafy backyard because my inbox needs taming? Denying myself the satisfaction of sitting down to write until my fingers feel like foreign languages because guests are slotted into our weekly calendar? Obeying the whims of the mundane and losing sight of beauty, of fun? No, no, no, this is no way to live.

And yet… I have no protocol in place for reigning in a full schedule. After all, like I frequently grumble to my husband on gorgeous Saturday mornings, someone has to do the dishes. Now that our lives have taken a turn for the normal—stuff to do, places to go, people to see—my inner perfectionist is stretched just as thin as my inner hermit. I can’t manage it all, and I suck at the pursuit of happiness; my priorities always seem to end up in favor of the tasks I enjoy the least. (Why does this happen, I ask?) It seems responsible, I guess, to dust cobwebs from dark corners when I really want to be painting with the girls.

But continual productive grumpiness is availing me nothing, and really… Responsibility is simply no way to live.

15Oct

What if They’re Dark Chocolate Salted-Caramel Cupcakes?

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 11 Comments

Today was about laundry. Hanging loads on the wind-whipped line, sudsing tomato sauce stains in the bathroom sink, swapping my summer wardrobe for wool, tacking duvets into their covers, ironing, ironing, ironing. Yesterday was about terrifying (to me) doctor’s appointments and even more terrifying (to me) social commitments. The day before was about choosing renters for our lonely house in the States and channeling a hefty build-up of financial worries into legalspeak.

Recharge time has been conspicuously absent from the week, and my batteries are starting to flicker and buzz. I don’t like who I become when creativitiy gets pushed to the back burner by busy work; it’s like subsisting on cream of wheat while my untouched four-course dinner turns lukewarm and begins breeding salmonella. It makes me grouchy. (I’m always grouchy when I’m hungry.)

More than that, this sense of having my attention forced toward things that don’t particularly interest me feels for all the world like pressure. It’s not like laundry is especially stressful or someone’s holding a gun to my head over the wording in our rental contract. But still, I feel the heaviness of unmet expectations after a tiring day settling squarely on my chest.

So here’s my question: How do I…
A) Clone 24 hours into 48, or
B) Survive on less than a full night of sleep, or
C) Find a personal assistant who will work for cupcakes, or
D) Be content when the real world’s demands drown out impulses of the heart?

9Jul

Cinder Block

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Our living room is breaking out in boxes. With less than a week till we’re handed keys for our new house, I shouldn’t be caught off guard… but I am anyway. A psychological cinder block is sitting squarely on top of my packing mojo, and I really wish I knew why so we could get on with this move already.

I feel distracted by nothing in particular, my brain wandering in the annoying, aimless way of ten-year-olds on summer break. The agenda for this month had been impressive: potty train one child and teach the other to read and write. Both are ready for their respective milestones, and I feel the responsibility to teach, the urgency to do it now. But first chores take my attention, and then laundry, and I have to finish the grocery list, and what in the world are we going to do about our empty house in the States? And then everyone’s hungry and lunch is late, and our afternoon gets knocked so far out of orbit that not even coffee can help, and I plug the girls into the TV so that I can get some pressing things done on the computer… and before I take a single focused breath, it’s too late to go to the park, and the motherguilt sweeps its cloud cover over the evening. And then the girls are in bed, and I’m cleaning up from their dinner to make ours, and we finish eating at bedtime exactly, and I realize I have gotten nowhere for the sixth day in a row.

It’s frustrating. As is the rash of empty boxes in our living room. Somebody should really start packing them.

3Jun

Ring-Around-the-Insanity

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Less than two weeks until our Stateside vacation, and the detail-hoarding squirrel in my left hemisphere is thisclose to frantic. We Bassetts have a noble traveling tradition of insanity, and those mad dashes across foreign cities take a lot of preplanning. Schedules to be calculated. Maps to be downloaded. Accommodations to be arranged. Insurance to be finagled. Suitcases to be precision-packed (I let my Tetris champion husband take care of that one). And must not forget the passports, wedding gifts, swim diapers, teething medicine, SIM cards, kitchen sinks, and brain cell refills.

I also have a hairy editing project to finish, so date night this week consisted of Dan and I side-by-side on our computers, eyes glazing over, forgetting all about supper. Chick flick material, I know. Add an upcoming move and potty training (why, God, why?) to the mix, and you have the kind of busyness that thunks around in the pit of my stomach at 3 a.m. Priorities keep playing ring-around-the-rosie in that way they do when I’m no longer seeing straight.

So, in the interest of preserving senses of adventure everywhere, please share: What was the craziest travel experience that you (or someone you know) survived?

1Oct

Puffed-Sleeved Authoring

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I’m still dabbling my toes in this new school-year schedule. Natalie’s pick-up means much less of the afternoon coffee calm I have grown so fond of, but the mornings are now sacred to writing. While Sophie sleeps away the hours (bless the child), I fix myself something hot and drinkable with one too many spoonfuls of sugar and pick my brain for usable words. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. Always, I feel like a charlatan in an artists’ world.

It’s so very easy to believe that other creative types spend all day in enchanted studios with brightly-lit idea dispensers and chocolate fountains spewing time. I love my little corner, but I have a horrible suspicion it’s only a playhouse where I make-believe what real adults do. Stephen King advises writing six hours a day, every day of the week, and then reading books the rest of the time to keep the mind fit. Anne Lamott instructs her students to plow through “shitty first drafts” and then put the bulk of time into rewriting. Julia Cameron recommends free-writing three “Morning Pages” every day to stimulate thought flow. Good advice, all. But they might as well advise me to write in Chinese.

I see my main job as loving my sweet husband and precious little girls by scrubbing, mending, doing umpteen hours of dishes a week, traveling, dancing, and taking afternoons off to play at the park. It’s the very best kind of hard work, and I’m happy to fit my writing in around the edges. But is that allowed? I can’t help thinking as I vacuum that Stephen King would tell me I’m obviously not committed enough. As I daydream and deliberate over an artful first draft, I can imagine Anne Lamott kicking me out of her class, and Julia Cameron’s “tsk tsk” rings in my ears as I bustle my early morning away with bottles and cereal and Winnie the Pooh backpacks.

I guess I’m just struggling to feel legitimate. And confident. And comfortable with the push-pull of a multi-faceted life. And less squeamish and crumbly about creating differently from everyone else. Oh, I hate being different. This feels an awful lot like being the only girl in seventh grade wearing lacy puffed-sleeve dresses while all the others look like Bratz models* and publish a best-selling novel each year and are swamped with incredible freelance gigs and have their names in the running for a Pulitzer and wear snappy glasses and never wash dishes because they’re too committed to leading brilliant author-y lives. I think I could be unequivocally happy with my present lifestyle once I get over this different complex and accept that maybe my way of finding fulfillment in writing is just right for me. Or if they start giving out Pulitzers for vacuuming. Either way.

—

*Please pretend that’s not a true story. Please?

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