Workaholism | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Workaholism

Leaf Piles of Failure

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Yesterday was one of Those Days, the kind you can’t help laughing over when retelling even though you really want to weep. To get my mind off of writer’s block and the subsequent gloom-and-doom of my future, I spent over a significant chunk of day cooking, peeling, and pureeing pumpkin. I whipped up two loaves’ worth of spicy-sweet pumpkin bread batter and deposited them in the oven… at which instant the oven breathed its last. I had to leave the kitchen as-is, heaped with dirty dishes and unbaked bread and orange splatters aplenty, to pick Natalie up from school, and then it took us over two hours to get back. A certain three-year-old—no names, but you catch my drift—dragged her feet to the extent that I pushed two girls with the stroller up-up-uphill. First to one store, then to another, then uphill yet again for an essential we forgot. A certain eleven-month-old—again, no names—threw her hat as we were crossing a spectacularly busy intersection, and the resulting car honks and angry shouts made me die a little inside. Then the stroller tipped over at the park, our grocery bag burst, and we all limped back to our pumpkin-besmeared home spewing a trail of white sugar in our wake. That was when the doorbell rang.

I’m learning that all you can do with a day so determined to be a failure is to let it. Roll around in its messiness and stupidity like a pile of fall leaves and have a blast scattering them to the wind. (Though honestly, I have hated rolling around in leaf piles since I was eight and realized that they probably contain bugs. And also dried leaves, which are awfully poky. And also bugs. Nevertheless, the metaphor stays.) Once I get over my unreasonable expectations, such as productivity and basic hygiene, failure days can be kind of fun. And the best news? Hours away is a brand new day that, chances are, has already learned to behave itself.

(I may acquire a taste for optimism yet… Who would have guessed?)

20Sep

Bane

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized Comments Off on Bane

What I want to do right now:
~ Waltz around the park beside our house absorbing the prismatic autumn afternoon
~ Make a silly YouTube video to embarrass my girls with one day
~ Pile myself on top of every pillow we own and read a novel
~ Teach Natalie how to do jumping jacks
~ Brush up on that gorgeous piano version of Canon in D
~ Write for seven hours straight, peeking into my Anne Lamott now and then for inspiration
~ Have a dance party with my peeps
~ Call up a good friend just to say hi
~ Take the Mini-Metro downtown to sniff lovely fragrances in The Body Shop (and lust over the shoes next door, of course)
~ Paint

What I have to do right now:
~ Dishes

(Can one pull off jumping jacks while scrubbing casserole dishes?)

5May

Two-Minute Increment

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Announcement: I’m still here.

I’ve been busy lately for reasons that still elude me, rifling through each day for the scraps of what’s most important. Uneventful busyness, I guess you could say. Every single minute has been an exercise in prioritization, and the mental weighing and justifying and second-guessing gets exhausting after awhile.

I adore writing, but it’s hard work–writing for publication, that is–and requires rich, intense blocks of my day. I also adore my girls, but they are both at ages brimming with needs: milk, structure, emergency bubble baths, story time, conversation, potty training, undivided attention, tickle attacks. Housework… well, I don’t adore, but a clean, welcoming home is essential to our survival around here. I love my husband like crazy, but it’s difficult finding our connection through all the pesky details of work and parenting, entertaining guests and early-onset bedtime. I have paints waiting in a giant pink bin under my bed and brand new music recording software I’m itching to try out and winterbaby flab to burn off and an entire language to finish learning already and always more and more wonderful, prismatic bits of life I want to hold onto with all my might… but I come in two-minute increments these days, and assorted parts do not equal a whole.

Do you ever find yourself hopelessly scattered and thinking that maybe the best present in the whole wide world would be a multi-pack of undivided time?

18Jan

Revenge of the All-Nighter

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

The Universe left me to find out a few things about life utterly on my own. For instance (stop me if you’ve heard this before), the “s” word is not “stupid.” And the “f” word is not “fart.” And the “b” word is not “butt.” And speaking of the “b” word, the phrase “That bitch has an ass-face” has much less to do with animals than I once knew.

But this post isn’t actually about the deflowering of my virgin ears. This post is about how the Universe neglected to tell me that I would PAY, years later, for those all-nighters I pulled in college. I rarely needed sleep back then. Once I fought through the brain-pummeling exhaustion to the pleasant zombie buzz, I was great. Mobile, even (though balance sometimes presented a problem). Staying up was easier for me than waking up, and I was at least 15% functional on no sleep; what more could an over-booked over-extended over-achiever want?

Flash forward to this morning. After a respectable eight-hour sleep*, I pried my rusty eyelids open, as ready as I ever am for a big day of grocery shopping with the girls, ~GROCERY SHOPPING WITH THE GIRLS~, and returning home with few casualties. Did I mention grocery shopping with the girls? Unfortunately, before my feet even hit the floor, I fell over dead courtesy of karmic retribution from College All-Nighter #54.

All I’ve been able to think about today is how the sky looks like soot-trampled gum and how snails have far too much energy and how my bed is just right over there and how that’s convenient with me being literally dead and all. Contestants on American Gladiator who have just finished the Obstacle Course of Near Demise and Certain Life-Sucking Extreme-to-the-Max Fatigue? Are barely one-fifth as tired as I am today. There is, of course, no explanation for this other than the folly of my sleepless youth catching up to me.

Darn** Universe.

*Yes, I have a newborn. No, you can’t have her.

**(Not the “d” word. Just thought you should know.)

8Jan

Mondo Beyondo

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Note: I didn’t intend to post this, the results of a therapeutic journaling session, for a few reasons:
~ I feel like I’ve already bored my readers to death by writing about this last crazy year.
~ Speaking of readers, I have readers. Readers who will read this.
~ I’m still new to this full honesty concept, and it’s terrifying. (See above.)
However, reading other people’s “Mondo Beyondos” has made me feel so affirmed in this harrowing business of being human, and I want to share that feeling–that we’re all real, with jagged edges and soft, spongey hopes, and that these twelve-month blocks we order our lives around matter more than we might ever realize. So:

“What do you want to acknowledge yourself for in regard to 2007?”

I’m proud of myself for jumping off the deep end into dream-chasing mode, for letting go of control and the need for stability. I found my secret stores of flexibility during a summer of three moves–the last, a one-week dash to another continent–and I found my secret stores of bravery during an autumn of jarringly new surroundings.

I’m proud of myself for saying goodbye to handwritten journals and a new hello to online publishing–exactly what I needed to kick start my writing again. Beginning with this impulse blog project in June, I’ve found satisfaction and resolution and incredible enjoyment through writing again. These increasing pages of text have helped me explore my voice and find clarity. Even more importantly, they have convinced me that writing is my love, my dream career, and thus my aspiration.

I’m proud of myself for learning how to care for two little girls at the same time. Despite all my previous assumptions to the contrary, I found the courage to leave the house… then to drive (stick shift, on hills, with Italian drivers, oh my)… then to run errands with both of my daughters in tow. I have been a good mother, as evidenced by the perpetual smiles on my girls’ faces, and I think they will love remembering these times through photos and wisps of memory and the letters I recently started writing them.

I’m proud of myself for digging far past my comfort zone to unearth new layers of honesty this past year. I’m also incredibly proud of my decision to stop regretting my past, my present, and everything about myself. It has certainly been a challenge for someone so accustomed to self-deprecation, but it has been freeing. I’ve found myself in the shower, mulling over blunders I think I’ve made, then pulling up short–No, this isn’t me anymore; I no longer regret myself. And perhaps this will turn out to be 2007’s greatest gift to me.

“What is there to grieve about 2007?”
I grieve that my relationship with God traveled beyond doubt and anger and simply dissipated. I need to forgive myself for leaving my Bible unopened on the shelf and my questions unasked simply because I didn’t want to face the pain.

I grieve that my relationship with Natalie moved into such rough territory. I need to forgive myself for yelling at her during bouts of frustration and for not giving her enough of my undivided attention.

I grieve that I spent so many days of the year battling depression… or not even finding the strength to battle it anymore. I need to forgive myself for being chronically tired, needy, human. I also need to forgive myself for letting the “shoulds” conquer my mind and saturate me with frustration. And I need to forgive those around me for not magically making me better or knowing the solutions that I can’t seem to find.

I grieve that I accomplished so, so little throughout the year–that I didn’t learn Italian fluently or finish my book or complete art projects or practice my instruments or cook new foods or exercise regularly (or at all) or make progress on reading lists or teach Natalie more or do volunteer work. I need to forgive myself for being one person, for being unable to multitask, and for needing so much sleep.

“What else do you need to say about the year to declare it complete?”
2007 was deep and raw and intense, dark chocolate with pepperoncino eaten from the blade of a knife. It hurtled between welcome adventures and terrifying ones; it pulled us far into the joy of close friendships and then slung us away. It taught us about generosity and flexibility and courage and communication, about how we face fears and changes and the future. And even though I know it’s okay to reel in 2007’s dizzying wake for a while, I’m ready to move on.

I declare 2007 complete.

27Nov

Thief, Ogre, Janitor = Mom

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

It’s hard to relax when you’re a thief, stealing a few minutes for music and uninterrupted breath in your sunny corner studio. Even though all your offspring are contentedly sleeping in the other room, you coach your guilt along–I should really be cleaning or editing or studying or cooking or saving the world–as though, without the guilt, you will disappear.

You dig farther into the reserve, tonguing your 9 a.m. frustration like a mouth sore. I wasn’t going to be a yelling mom. I wasn’t going to use the TV as a babysitter. I was going to smile constantly at my children, be accessible, stimulate their creativity, enjoy every minute with them. It’s worse, even, because you used to be a Good Mother™. Now, you’re mostly ogre, and the monster is coming out in your little girl, and you have no idea which prompted the other.

You don’t mean to change the subject, but there are no solutions in sight–only dusty windowsills and dirty coffee mugs. Your serotonin levels plummet under the weight of so many unfinished tasks. The physical laws of the universe dictate that housecleaning is never finished–not when people move and breathe and inhabit said house–but universal truths are no match for your dissatisfaction at uncompleted projects. You’re a terrible janitor for the same reason you’re a stellar one.

You wish you didn’t think of yourself as a janitor; no one embraces that label. Plus, it’s an overly dramatic and negative interpretation of your role as mom. It also shows a horrid mix-up in priorities; when did janitor replace playmate and teacher? And how could something as mundane and fundamentally imperfect as a house take precedence over your own children?

You swish around the guilt in your head, vaguely wondering how much of your brain it has taken over. You wonder how different your days would be if you hadn’t grown up believing that guilt was Godliness. You wonder how you can keep it from spreading like a toxic stain over your family. If only it could just be scrubbed from your persona… How did I get stuck with myself? My personality traits, my memories, my vast inadequacies? I know how to skin emus, play Chinese flute, write iambic pentameter, pronounce words in Zulu, and teach babies to sleep through the night but not how to make myself work right.

You grimace at how self-centric your thoughts have become. You don’t know if sharing your foibles with the world at large is helpful or entertaining or hideously presumptuous, and you run through the disclaimers: I still love my family. This is just a stage, compounded by a lot of major life changes. And it’s not actually that bad; I’m just a pessimist. But you know that the disclaimers will only sound fabricated, in a “she doth protest too much” way, and presumptuous or not, un-disclaimed honesty has value.

You swallow several times, write “Stop overanalyzing!” on a to-do list, and sit down to play puppies with your two-year-old daughter. The dirty dishes–and the guilt–can wait for a while.

15Nov

Time Is [Not] On My Side

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Last week, a mere ten days post-C-section, we wandered all over Assisi with friends and had a marvelous time. I took this to mean that I had finally developed super-powers and agreed to host dinner for friends, entertain a house guest, and cook a Thanksgiving feast for fifteen people this week. I believe the term for this is “delusions of grandeur.”

It’s not that taking care of a newborn is difficult; Sophie’s happy with a full tummy, a clean diaper, and 23 hours of sleep a day. It’s just that everything takes so much time now. Or rather, ordinary household duties don’t magically take negative time to make up for the 350 minutes a day I now spend feeding and changing the precious little addition to our lives. (Not to mention the compulsory hour or two reminding her how ridiculously cute she is.) (Beyond legal limits of cuteness, in case you were wondering.)

With a new six-hour deficit to each day, I find the hideous words “time management” pacing through my mind like the Grim Reaper. They don’t help except to cackle ominously each time the clock prevents me from taking the girls on a walk or sitting down to write or showering before lunch. And it’s hard. Hard to reconcile my sense of individuality and ambition with the reality of constant momhood. Hard to soothe my impatient mind with the fact that I will one day miss the way my little girls cling to me for survival. Hard to give enough quality time to each child to diffuse the guilt of so much busyness, even though the children are the source of that busyness.

Many people have offered their help, but I don’t know what to ask for… except maybe a clone. Or double-strength sleep. Or self-cleaning laundry. Or an hour dispenser. (Paying attention, Santa?)

The last thing I want to do is stumble bleary-eyed and frazzled–or worse, grudgingly–through this irreplaceable stage of life. I know that all too soon I’ll miss the way Natalie feeds me pretend candy 700 times a day, and the way Sophie giggles every time she drifts off to sleep. Maybe I just need to take a course on time management to figure this motherhood thing out. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time…

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