Life is messy. Why don’t we talk about it?
A “day in the life” post from communication specialist, Amanda Lydon
My alarm goes off at 4:15 AM because some crazy evening version of me thought I might get up before my children and get the day started properly with coffee, a workout, and a to-do list in quiet. The 4:15 AM version of me is less of an overachiever. I roll over causing my nose to meet the left foot of my three year old who apparently climbed into our bed at some point.
At 5:50 AM both my kids are squawking and my spouse and I are silently willing the other to get up already! I’m more stubborn and more tired so I win. My family heads downstairs and I get five more minutes of sleep.
I run upstairs to my attic turned office to scan HootSuite and shoot off an agenda for a phone meeting later today. Downstairs my kids are eating breakfast and my husband (who has made coffee, thank God) is reminding me that he has to be out of the house by 7 AM to catch a flight to Washington DC for the rest of the week as he rushes to get ready.
By the time the nanny is due to arrive at 8:30 AM the kids and I have completed what my three year old calls the “get ready steps.” The baby is in his crib for his morning nap, the three year old is watching PBS (what is supposed to be his only show of the day) and I am at the kitchen table scheduling tweets and Facebook posts for the day. We are good to go!
Except I glance at my phone and I have a missed call and text messages… The nanny is sick! Spouse on plane, nanny not coming! We’ve recently moved so spouse and nanny pretty much covers all the adults I can call to watch the kids. Okay.
I get shoes on my three year old, wake a sleeping baby, and walk to preschool. The baby who is really technically a toddler and I go for a walk. There’s no way he’s going back to sleep now. He’s quiet in the stroller and happy to look around the neighborhood so I stop at a coffee shop, get the largest, most caffeinated coffee I can order and make phone calls for the day. It’s pretty much magic until the kiddo decides it’s not.
We make our way back home where I hand my almost one year-old a laundry basket filled with clothes — aka the most fun ever. He’s pretty happy with that while I draft emails for a comms campaign.
After preschool pick up I take the kids to the playground. I pack a hundred snacks for “snacky lunch” and encourage the kids to dig and run and swing and climb. I am determined that they are going to take good afternoon naps so that I can get more work done. It works! Hallelujah!
During the two hour nap I scan social media again, write a blog post, update an editorial calendar, exchange edits with a client, fight with Constant Contact and presto! both kids are screaming.
I get my kiddos up. There’s poop. A lot of it. There’s crying and there’s pushing and there’s me promising lollipops and an afternoon of more TV. Big brother lands on the couch with lollipop and settles in for a million hours of television and little brother plays with more laundry on the floor.
I’ve moved my office to the living room sofa where the internet apparently doesn’t work. I move to the dining room and attempt to answer a few calls without sounding like I’m also running the daycare center.
One of my clients needs to change everything about an email because the details of a program have just been changed and he needs it done immediately. I get another lollipop and a bottle and get to it. While I’m getting to it, my kids decide to help with the laundry, the kitchen, etc. And you see the results!
This is not every day! This is not a cautionary tale of what happens when nanny calls out. This is not what life as a work at home parent looks like every day. But the thing is life is happening all around as we work. Every day, every one of us has something come up. And yet the work still gets done. What happens if we’re more honest about it? Maybe you are a parent. Maybe you have an aging parent to care for. Maybe you’re unwell or worried or caring for someone else who is unwell.
We know Americans work too much and too many hours. We know people don’t have enough leave after kids are born or when illness or death strikes families. And we know this is a struggle for every single one of us. Can we start talking about it in a little bit? Talk about how it’s funny sometimes, how it’s embarrassing sometimes, how it’s too damn hard sometimes! It seems we waste a lot of energy trying to figure it out for all by our lonesome. Trying to look like we don’t have any mess in the background. We’re just workers getting the job done. Can’t we trust each other to be good at our jobs even knowing that we’re humans with messes too?
Amanda Lydon is is a creative thinker who supports literary, feminist and social justice types as a communications strategist and events producer. She has a proven record for converting nascent ideas into thriving programs and had this crazy idea to do so from a home office that she imagined would never be messy. She currently manages social media for Take Two. Are you following us on Twitter and Facebook? Amanda lives outside Philadelphia with her two helpful kids and her favorite grownup. As soon as things become a little less messy her new website will be completed. Until then you can follow her (sometimes) on Twitter.
