Making/re-making time

Hi, just checking in.

We’re going with the second definition of “checking in” from our friend Merriam Webster - reporting one’s presence or arrival.

So, here I am. Present. Arrived. 

I started writing here to have a space that I owned. Where algorithms are absent and words aren’t buried in a landslide of content as soon as they are planted onto a page. My writing has been scattered, sporadic - half-written posts and orphaned ideas. Little word weeds. I am starting again, ripping things out, even though I’ve never liked weeding. But I want to come back to this idea that having space, making space, is worth the time.

Time. My four letter word.

When I graduated from college with my design degree we planned on waiting a few years to have kids. I was pregnant six months later (another story for another day). I didn’t know how to be a designer yet, or a parent, but I did know I wanted to be both. Can I be both? Motherhood and career had always been presented as an either/or: choose one. Choose wisely. Now the internet told me in tiny, shiny squares that yes! have both! have it all! but pulled the curtain closed around the details.

There was no sense of time those first few months with a tiny human. Days and nights didn’t exist, just one long run on sentence punctuated by tears (mutual). Then, pockets of time started to appear. I could squeeze a little freelance work into them while squeezing myself back into jeans post baby. I could make it work. Holding a sleeping baby in one arm while drawing with the other. Reading creative briefs while nursing. Scheduling calls during nap time with every finger and toe crossed that nap time = a sleeping baby.

My kids and my work have had to grow up together, sharing the attention and mistakes like siblings. Twelve years of finding that there is no balance, just a shifting priority between the two. Perennial ping-pong. Always wishing for just a little more time for both. Knowing that it would never feel like enough time for either.

I’ve wondered - how do you make more time? Is it baked? Knit? Shaped? When you run out can you whip up another batch? Add to cart? Can I gather the leftover scraps at the end of the day - the minutes in between  - and sew them into a new piece of time for tomorrow?

That is what it has felt like, working from home while raising kids, that I have been making and re-making this same piece of time over and over. And each new baby, new job, new milestone - the seams are unpicked, the pattern is adjusted, allowances made - and I’m holding up a new piece of time, hoping it will fit.

When I pictured making that choice after college I imagined two boxes - one marked Motherhood and the other Career. Taking both meant holding one in each hand. Separated. Contained. Now I can see that they were not boxes being offered, but threads. Holding both means twining them together, braiding them around myself. They inform and form each other in a way I couldn’t picture at the beginning. My work.

So here is a tiny offering of ramblings just to say I’m still here. Still trying to make time and space.