Jottoshob 05: I Can't Do It All

To my dad, who said, "You can't do it all," a few hours after I thought of it. Maybe you do read my mind.

Last Friday, I forgot I had a newsletter to send out. I just…forgot. My brain has been working at half-capacity for a while now, and last week was so incredibly stressful (not that this week got any better), that the mere thought of doing something other than work, was freaking me out. That is mostly the crux of today’s newsletter, which I am remembering to write, albeit a week late. So, here goes…

…and yes I did change the Jottoshob banner’s colour. The old red was waaaay too red.

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I can’t do it all.

For the longest time, I thought I could. I think most people do. I’ve been freelancing since 2015, and I thought, “Hey, I got this. I’ve got experience in juggling shit.” So, when I started working full-time last year, I thought I could make time tangible. I thought I could take the clock and cut it into neat pieces. This piece for Project 1, this piece for Project 2, this tiny one for Yoga, these intermittent pieces for Family Time, this one for Study…it goes on.

Turns out the cake…I mean clock…isn’t all that big.

And, to my surprise, the size of the pieces kept re-adjusting themselves. It’s never 1 hour of yoga, 6 hours of work, 2 hours of family time, for life. It doesn’t come in a package. Sometimes, it’s 24 hours of utter chaos where each piece eats into the other one until you’re out of labels, out of knives, out of pieces, and most definitely out of time.

Over the last two weeks, I have gone to bed at 5 or 6 a.m. on average. Sometimes, working nights was good. No sound, no distraction, no kids yelling, no neighbour banging down the front door. Sometimes, however, I wanted to let my head fall onto the keyboard and pass out. Sometimes, I only saw blurry, floating words where a manuscript should have been. And on every single night, irrespective of how much work I got done, I hated myself.

Dawn has become rather terrifying to me, because everytime I see the skies turning lighter, I realise that is one more day where I failed to juggle everything. One more day I had burnt through where not enough was done.

I do, however, enjoy the half-second when I light a smoke and stare into the light blue sky; the sweet half-second between dawn breaking and the birds waking, when the entire city is asleep. Except me.

I thought I could do it all. I really did. I thought I could prepare for another degree, do my job, give my family all the time they need, and get away with it. No compromises. Every part, every piece gets my 100%. As I write this down, I realize how absolutely ludicrous it sounds. But when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re convinced that you can have it all, it seems oddly attainable. It’s like a carrot on a stick, just near enough to seem real, just far enough to keep you running.

For me, all it has done is led me into contradicting outcomes, to the point where I think I’m beginning to lose my mind. Take these sets for example:

Set 1:

—I hang out even when I have 30 deadlines waiting because I can’t estrange my friends. What if I lose them? What if I become one of those people who trade their support system in for their career?

—I stay at home, working incessantly when I really want to go on a walk with my friend. Because I have missed too many deadlines, and I can’t afford to miss out on any more. And, they say, adulthood requires such “missing out”s, no? So, I strap in and type away while my heart tries to remember the last time I laughed.

To friend or not to friend, then?

Set 2:

I barely get to talk to my partner because we’re both busy. So, when he has an off day, I squeeze my work into overnights along the week, so I can have one whole day with him. No work. Because that’s just what you do, right?

When my partner goes to sleep, I get back up, light the lamp, put a notebook over the top so it’s dark in the rest of the room, and I work for hours while he sleeps. Because that’s the piece of the clock where I can fit in some work, so I don’t have to stay up late that night.

But then my partner wakes up, doesn’t see me beside him, and just…turns sad.

So, the elaborate circus I concocted in order to restore some togetherness, some happiness to the relationship, it just goes…poof.

To top that off, it’s not like I got a lot of work done in the dark. I did have to stay up till 4 a.m. anyway, starring at words which (I swear) were floating.

Set 3:

I take the family out, or just mom, or just dad, or just boo — pick an option, they all work. Once we get home, I stay up that night chasing deadlines, which then hugely upsets all three of them because, well, my health.

So, you see, it’s like being alone on a see-saw. I hop on to one side, it goes down. I hop onto the other, it goes down too. And while there are so many flaws with the metaphor and I’m sure some physics whiz knows how to balance both sides, you get the gist.

One day, not too long ago, I crashed into my work seat and said, “I can’t do it all.” It was oddly freeing. I didn’t feel like a loser. In the sense that I didn’t feel humiliated. I realized that I had acknowledged I was not going to win this race. That I can’t, I can’t quite seem to find a way to make everything work all the time, or even once.

I wanted it all. I’d be lying if I said I still don’t. But there is a little peace in knowing for sure that I will never really have it. That I will never be able to keep everybody happy all at the same time. That I won’t be able to fit a birthday party, a 2-hour phone call, a meeting, and two deadlines into one single day. That I won’t be able to green-tick every deadline I am given, or achieve every task on my to-do list. I know that I won’t be able to take on as much work as I currently am and still hope to prepare for a degree. It’s disappointing. It’s downright heartbreaking. But it’s also…okay.

It’s okay. Because even while failing to do everything, I have still done some things. I have still made some people happy, green-ticked some deadlines, studied some theory, watched some movies, done well on some projects, had the time of my life on some weekends. That’s got to count for something, no?

I’ve often thought about how I’d do things differently if I could start over. But that’s pointless, because we all know that in each timeline, in each branch that sprouts off, there’s always something…something to run away from. Marvel taught us that, time and time again.

I’m going to cite a scene from ‘Kevin Can Go F*** Himself’ because it made me smile:

Allison: I feel like nothing I do is ever enough.

I really think if I could start over and go somewhere else and just do
everything right this time, I can finally be...

[SIGHS]

like, done.

Is that insane?

Patty: You know how many people come to my salon every week thinking a perm will
solve all their problems?

I mean... maybe you're insane, but you're not alone.

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I’m going to be okay. Maybe someday I’ll be able to clone myself and get the see-saw to balance. Or, better still, maybe I’ll get off the damn ride because why is a full-grown woman riding a see-saw alone?

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I love you all. Thank you for hearing me out.