How To Mom-It-All

Work. Mom. Self. Sometimes sole breadwinner. Sometimes single parent. How do we mom-it-all? We don’t. Or at least, I don’t.

If I’m writing, something else is getting less of my attention. Usually, it’s the house. Sometimes it’s exercise. A lot of the time, it’s me.

I became a mom during the pandemic—or about a year and a few months after the initial lockdown. At the time, I was working full-time on a TV show as a writer/producer. Because I adopted my son and we matched late in his birth mother’s pregnancy, I didn’t have that nine-month window to decorate a nursery or prepare my bosses for maternity leave.

In fact, I didn’t even tell my bosses. I had started the job in June. They sent me to script at the end of June, and by mid-July—five days before they expected me to turn in my first draft—my son was born. Oh yeah, he was early.

I wouldn’t say I became a mom overnight, but with adoption you can’t really plan—you never know how it’s going to go. My son’s birth helped me pivot, change course, and accept that things don’t always go as planned. And that’s kind of the law of parenting: you never know what your day is going to look like.

Sometimes they sleep through the night. Other times they wake up crying—or vomiting—at 3 AM. Half the time you’re sleepwalking through these moments. I read somewhere that moms get interrupted 2,500 times in a day and that it actually changes the wiring in our brains. I believe it.

And this is why I remind myself to cut myself some slack when the dishes pile high in the sink, the laundry sits unfolded for days, and there’s pet hair all over my rugs. You can’t mom-it-all.

If I’m jamming on a rewrite, I’m not going to stop and clean my house. I’m just not. My scripts, my book—these things are more important than the dishes in the sink. So is going for a run, a rollerblade, a swim, the gym, lunch with a friend—or even a shower.

Playing with my son, engaging with him—that’s more important than cleaning my house. It just is. And in order to do that, I need to work, write, and create while he’s at school. I’ll get to those dishes eventually.

But I don’t need to do it all. It’s impossible to do it all. And you know what else is important when it comes to parenting and working? Taking time to just… do nothing. To sit on the couch and stare into the abyss.

Nothing is important too. You need to do nothing. If you don’t, you don’t recharge. Does a battery-operated toy work without a charged battery? No. So why would you?

I’m not saying you can’t do it all. I’m saying you can’t do it all at once. And you don’t need to get it all done by the end of the day. You’ll get to “it all” eventually.