Believe it or not, I have absolutely not mastered this at all.
I am one of these people that cannot focus on more than one thing fully at a time and I despise leaving things unfinished. On the one hand, this tenacious and motivated side of my personality is great, but on the other hand, it can often make me a little obsessive and totally absorbed in one thing. When I was teaching, this was all too often the case. I would do my best to entertain my daughter Annabelle, meanwhile not really entertaining her at all. I would look at my schedule for the week and feel that yucky sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I knew fun-time was over and I HAD to sit and organise lessons. I would try as much as possible to do this in the evenings when she was in bed, but my Annabelle didn’t EVER want to sleep. She was a human duracell battery and could just go on and on and on! I used to think, seriously, ‘where the hell does she get so much energy from?’ I wish she could bottle it up and sell it to me!
Anyway, more often than not, I would just have to bite the bullet and try and be mum and also be teacher. One of the many struggles of being a single mum is the constant compromise, you never really can think about yourself – only ever your priorities, which for me were Annabelle and work.
I used to get SO sick of other parents coming up to me while I was working full time asking me ‘ HOW DO YOU DO IT?’ ‘I COULD NEVER LEAVE MY BABY ALL DAY LONG’
For me, it was not an option, I had no choice- financially speaking here, I could not afford not to work full time. And I was still skint all the f*cking time. I would have loved to have attended baby-mom groups with other new mummies and socialised and generally had the opportunity to just give myself a break, but alas, that was not my life’s design.
I would usually stick the TV and give her little activities to do but there were so many times where she would desperately try to get my attention or engage with me and I was vacuous to it as I knew my deadlines were hanging over me like a noose. It was a horrible time and looking back it fills me with such resentment and frustration that I put her second on so many occasions.
Now in the present, I find myself in a very different situation. I am my own boss. I am the master of my destiny and I can do what I want.
I WISH!
Since setting up the business, I have really started to feel the strain of being a 1-man-band with all of the accountability for whether my business sinks or sails. It’s stressful!
However, Annabelle is in a much more settled, relaxed environment now and her mummy is in a much better headspace to deal with the demands of setting up a business from scratch.
Now, to the best of my ability, I call the shots, obviously at times where it can’t I get ad-hoc bookings and Annabelle has to go over to family member’s houses while I do treatments. I try not to get swept away with the lack of structure and do my very best to look at the bigger picture and just go with the flow. It’s about making choices, good, informed choices. You’re not always going to get it right, but where possible, take the reins and pull in the direction that you feel is right.
Whenever I get a spare moment, I make a conscious effort to get online and produce some written material or short vlogs, just so that I can evidence to myself that I’m being proactive (one of my coping strategies to fight my depression) this helps massively but I don’t let it dictate my day. I don’t let it define the way I am going to feel or behave. If it gets done, amazing, I feel really great but if it doesn’t sh*t happens and in the grand scheme of things I will try extra hard to do double the next day.
I am able to take Annabelle to school and pick her pretty much every day. I’m sure a lot of mum’s would agree this is possibly one of the most stressful elements of motherhood, but when you have been used to taking your child into nursery from 7.30am until 5.30pm from 4 months old, it really is a glorious privilege that I am just enjoying so much.
Just lately, it has really hit me hard that time is moving quicker than I can keep up with and so I try with every little bit of me to embrace every moment. When my daughter calls me from her bedroom, I put the laptop down. We sit and we do reading together, we have 4pm tea and buscuits after school and do the things that she loves, like tickle fights and making glittery slime.
Time waits for no one and I am even getting a little teary thinking about it now as my little girl fast approaches her 6th birthday this Sunday.
Make every single moment count, never regret the time you spent making them laugh, even if it meant you’re work or social life didn’t get the attention it perhaps needed. I promise you, when all is said and done, the time spent with your little ones trumps anything else there is.
'TIME IS THE MOST VAULABLE THING A MAN CAN SPEND'
- Theophrastus