My Lowest Day
My schedule these days is a “flex time” schedule of a couple of days in the office, a couple of days from a home office, always plugged in to something and juggling kids – work – house – everything (sound familiar)? I was reminded the other day of one of my lowest days…I’d been working like mad. On conference calls with the phone on mute as I pushed kids in the swing, justifying extended viewings of “Sesame Street” with “It’s Educational, right?” It was a crunch time at work and I was trying to prove that I could do it all. And I was so stressed. And strangely (!) my kids were acting generally squirrelly…
So I was in my home office, stressed and trying to get my computer to work, and respond to emails, and they had a play room full of toys that had just been built for them, right next door—but all anyone could do was pull out my files, push my keyboard keys, climb on me. I snapped. I screamed “Get OUT of here!” And I picked them each up—a 2 ½ year old and two one year old twins—and put them right outside my office door and closed the door so I could finish what I was doing in three minutes.
I sat there and listened to them all scream outside the door and just cried, looking at my computer and feeling like the worst person in the world. Everyone always told me “I don’t know how you do it” and I knew right then I WASN’T doing it.
I took the next day off. I didn’t have my phone or my blackberry. We went to Hoboken, we had a picnic in the playground…we looked at the boats…we went at the pace of my 2 ½ year old. I didn’t rush her or throw her into the stroller with her sisters to get home for a call—instead we poked along and stopped to look at dogs, and generally lolly-gagged all day.
That was one of my best days. And that’s when I knew that sometimes, going at the pace of a toddler is what you need to do—to keep everyone sane.