I am a Household Management Project Leader

I've been blogging awhile.  Recent topics include vacations, family outings, Cub Scouts, holidays, and of course, my son and his antics.  Like so many people I know, I post about real life but with a utopian, slightly more idealistic, twist.

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is an expression I grew up with; it meant trying to keep up with the appearances, which is to say the money, prestige, house, yard, and life, of our neighbor/s.  Now-a-days "the Joneses" are not necessarily our neighbors.  They are the people we find on social media, too.  I am no longer just comparing myself to the woman down the street, I'm also comparing myself to the mother in Texas that's amazing at home decor, the woman in North Dakota that's a fabulous chef, or even some of my long lost friends and acquaintances on Facebook that seem to have the perfect family life; their kids are Olympic gymnasts, astrophysicists, and social entrepreneurs at the age of twelve.

The constant comparing has become draining and so has keeping up with my illusory posts.  The reality is that we do go on some amazing trips, and we do try to bring a taste of adventure into our otherwise ordinary, mundane lives.  But, my life isn't perfect.  To try and find adventure means to let other things go by the wayside.  My house is cluttered, my cooking is nill--relying on take out or pre-packaged meals, and on most days, when I have to wake up at five in the morning to plan and get ready for the day, I find myself on the couch by 8 p.m. in a vegetative state, which can only be compared to a coma, unless I'm full out sleeping (even when my son may not have had supper yet).

This is what my upstairs railing looks like on most days of the week...

My home office...just keepin' it real.

I recently ran into an article called "How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation" by Anne Helen Peterson.  Now, to be clear, I am not a Millenial.  At age 43, I am a "Generation Xer," but I'm only about five years older that the first of the Millennials.  The article resonated with me because I am, essentially, "burned-out."  I could go into all the details and all the "ah ha" moments Peterson provides because there are many of them, but I would be doing a disservice to the article itself, because it is, in my mind, a masterpiece, which fully illustrates how and why our lives, at this moment in time, have become so inexplicably complicated.  It's absolutely worth a read--a "task" to place on top of everyone's "to-do list."

As I read the article, two points stuck with me the most.  First, Peterson coins a term that has now become part of my everyday vocabulary called "errand paralysis."  She describes it as the inability to accomplish certain items on her to-do list because they "are seemingly high-effort, low reward tasks" that "paralyzed" her.  The items would keep on "rolling over [from] one week to the next" causing ultimately a feeling of anxiety and shame.  A light bulb went off.  (In fact, I shared this part of the article with a few of my coworkers, and they nodded in agreement, too.)  A big mental drain in my life stems from the feeling of unaccomplishment--a feeling of never being able to mark off all the items on my to-do list.  The same "less important" items keep being pushed off, and they collect and fester.  Instead of rewarding myself for what I did accomplish that week, month, year, I instead, zone in on what I didn't do, feeling ineffective and defeated.

Later in the article, Anne Helen Peterson, speaks about a cartoon called "You Should've Asked," created by a French, feminist comic known as Emma.  In the cartoon, Emma refers to mothers as "household management project leaders," and she goes on to show how labor burnout is just as much from being a homemaker as it is from working a full-time job.  (If you're managing both, then you have twice "the mental load.")  Peterson so eloquently and so profoundly describes the role of household management project leader as this:

They're ultimately responsible for the health of the family, the upkeep of the home and their own bodies, maintaining a sex life, cultivating an emotional bond with their children, overseeing aging  parents' care, making sure bills are paid and neighbors are greeted and someone's home for a service call and holiday cards get in the mail and vacations are planned six months in advance and airline miles aren't expiring and the dog's getting exercised (Peterson, 2019, para. 56) 

After I read this, I ended my personal shaming.  You see, it's difficult for me to admit to the fact that my house is a mess most of the time; it's difficult for me to admit that I don't cook/prepare meals; it's difficult for me to admit that on many days during the workweek, I come home in an unconscious state, simply unable to make conversation or process things on my to-do list, like help Lewie with homework, go through mail, or even work on getting prepared for the next day.  Sometime I nap first and get started on it around 8 or 9 p.m.  Other times, I promise myself I'll wake up early in the morning to try and get it all done.  Little Lewie has learned the routine by now:  Mommy is energetic, fun, and emotionally available in the mornings.  At night, well, you take what you can get.

 I'd like to change all this.  For years, I've told myself that this will change someday.  But, the reality is this:  As long as I work full-time and come home at 6, 7, or 8 p.m. at night, I will be tired and pretty much unavailable.   I've thought about changing careers, and once upon a time, I did stay home with Little Lewie,  Once upon a time, I also worked part-time instead of full-time.  The outcome, however, was almost the same.  It wasn't just the job work but what Emma calls "the mental load" that makes me exhausted.  Unless I chose not to be a Household Management Project Manager, I was still going to have this endless to-do list.  Maybe with more time available, more items would get checked off the list, but then again, maybe I'd still be adding on more items now to compensate for the money I wasn't bringing home.  After all, money is what allows us to plan our great trips, to sign up Lewie for computer camp and outdoor adventures, and to, quite honestly, pay our bills without constant worry and anxiety--the reason why I went back to work full-time in the first place. For me, working full-time at a college also means that when Lewie turns 18, he should be able to attend tuition free. So, if some of my burnout didn't come from work, then, surely, it would come from worrying about how we would get ahead of the bills, the student loans, and the credit card debt.  Either way, "the mental load" would remain.

"How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation" ended up being a savior to my self-esteem.  It made me realize that no matter how glamorous people's lives appear to be in blogs, Facebook, Instagram, and the like, it's really "make-believe."  None of us are perfect 100% of the time, and most of us suffer from some type of "errand paralysis."  We all have items on our to-do list that don't get checked off.  The real answer is to not let those items get in the way of living life.  At least for me, it's to not base my self-worth off of completing my next task.

The non-stop items will always be there (unless I choose to live off the grid in some remote place undisturbed by society).  So, the only thing that can change is my attitude.  Do I blame myself every time I don't accomplish a task, or do I reward myself every time I do complete one?  Do I go into resentment mode when I wake up to a messy house, or do I remind myself that the house is messy because we just had an eventful family weekend that took priority over our weekend errands.  In the end, it's okay.  Things will get done, and no one will ever remember what I accomplished.  What they'll remember is the time I spent with them.  Now, where's that to-do list?  Errand 1: Stop Beating Myself Up.