{"id":3829,"date":"2013-12-23T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=3829"},"modified":"2013-12-21T17:30:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T22:30:05","slug":"on-having-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/on-having-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"On Having It All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday was a good day for me. A very<\/em> good day.<\/p>\n

I hit a home run at work. It was the culmination of months of effort, and I was well and truly proud of the work that I’d done. I came home to a smiling, happy toddler. We danced around the kitchen together, and then I held her in my arms as she stared in wonder at our Christmas Tree. Kristian came home and took over so that I could go run laps at the Y. I got back from my run and he’d put her to bed and cooked us a delicious dinner. \u00a0For a brief, shining moment, it felt like the many aspects of my life were working. All the pieces fit together. And it felt glorious.<\/p>\n

The previous Friday? Not such a good day. I was stressed at work. The house was a disaster. Lilian was in the final throes of a weeks-long cold and feeling grumpy and miserable. I wasn’t feeling so hot myself. Kristian and I were taking our frustration out on each other.<\/p>\n

When everything comes together, life feels fantastic. I love my family, I love my work, I love that I get to experience both. But it’s a delicate balance, and it’s easy to feel like things are suddenly spiraling downwards. Something goes wrong at work the day after Lilian interrupts our sleep, and suddenly I’m running on empty and trying not to panic in the face of all the crap I need to deal with.<\/p>\n

Having it all is a myth, a lie, a great white whale that some of us are silly enough to chase after.<\/p>\n

You can never<\/em> have it all.<\/p>\n

But, sometimes? You can have it all for about six hours.<\/p>\n

The very idea of having it all is a concept born out of privilege. Not everybody has the luxury of deciding how they want to strike a work\/life balance. A lot of people are just trying to make sure that all the bills get paid on time. I’m one of the lucky ones. Sure, we need my income to pay the mortgage. But if I woke up tomorrow and decided that it’s all too much? We’d figure something out.<\/p>\n

I’m lucky in so many ways. I have a job where I can work somewhat flexible hours and a boss who understands it when I use my lunchtime to do things like take Lilian to a doctor’s appointment. I have a husband who is an equal partner. He does plenty of housework, cooks almost all of our meals, takes on half the childcare. I have parents nearby who save us a ton<\/em> of money by taking a day of childcare each. Parents who I can call up in a last-minute panic because Kristian has a client meeting, I have jury duty, and Lilian is running a fever and can’t go to daycare for the day.<\/p>\n

There’s never enough time in the day to accomplish all of the things that I’d like to. I have half a dozen unfinished craft projects cluttering up our attic. I can’t remember the last time I read a book for fun. This poor blog is sadly neglected. But I get a lot done. There are so many things in my life that bring me great joy.<\/p>\n

Like this little munchkin.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. But I’m working really hard these days to enjoy the hell out of my cake as I’m consuming it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday was a good day for me. A very good day. I hit a home run at work. It was the culmination of months of effort, and I was well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,34,54,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-kristian","category-lj","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-ZL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3829"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3831,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions\/3831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}