the art of time-blocking

how I keep the choo-choo trains running as a stay-at-home-mom-who-also-works

Before we were married, my husband and I agreed that I would stay home to raise any children we had. I suppose this was partly a rational decision — Jordan Peterson's pro-family exhortations and Erica Komisar's Being There were influential — but mostly it just felt right.

When the time came to abandon my formal career, I felt something between the relief promised by the traditional housewife lobby and the grief the girlboss brigade had led me to expect. While work wasn't "fulfilling" in any meaningful sense, neither was it "soul-sucking." It gave me a pleasant sense of purpose and an outlet for my talents, not to mention money and the social status gainful employment also confers. Moments of real interest and thrill made up for the mild drudgery.

Motherhood wasn’t accurately described by ideologues, either. Unlike my job, it was deeply fulfilling in a way words couldn't quite express, but at the cost, in the beginning, of profound isolation and crippling lassitude. I never resented how much my children needed me, but I couldn't ignore the sense that my options in life had irrevocably narrowed.

I suspect many women live in this ambivalence.

We're often told this inner conflict is the inevitable result of trying to "have it all"; simply commit to one or the other and peace will follow. But I’m beginning to consider the possibility that the work-home dichotomy itself is false — a relic of a centuries-old wedge between man and woman, and the concepts of secular and sacred, that eventually became the sex war.

That's certainly the thesis behind how I structure my days. The goal is to honor my duties to family while also honing my skills, and participating in public life and commerce in my own small way.