Confessions of an Over-Committed House-wife

With a word like “confessions” in the title, I can’t very well start with small talk; I may as well get straight to the heart of the matter:

I am addicted to cheese. 

And not just in a passing crush kind of way, nor in a monogamous commitment to your more stable Cheddar, or Swiss.  Nope, I’m more situated in a riot of the heart, come ruin or rapture love affair with almost every form of frommage one can find at their local Trader Joe’s. Sweet and tangy cranberry goat cheese, creamy Havarti dill and dry and elegant Parmesans – I buy and consume them at an alarming rate.  And you may wonder at the cause for concern; isn’t it just a chunk of cheese after all?  Just a chunk?!  Have you seen the calories a “chunk” of cheese contains?  Of course you have. Because likely, you are one of those controlled and capable women who allots themselves only a reasonable portion of such fatty treats and can be content with that.  But I’ve never been good at allotting, reasonable, portions or contentment, and on the off chance that you aren’t either, perhaps the rest of this rambling little essay will apply to you as well.

            You see, that same lack of self control has now crept far beyond my refrigerator door (where I thought I kept it at least satiated with copious quantities of cheese) and into the majority of my new life as stay-at-home mama.  In fact, giving birth to my son a few months ago and choosing to plunge head-long into the world of house-wifery opened up my eyes to a great deal of things I never expected to excel at/ am not that good at.  I feel like I have failed and flourished, succeeded and sucked pretty much every day by at least 9am. And I know by that time if it’s going to be a good day, because by then I either am or am not ready to rush out the door to do the many things I’ve committed to.

            It is this constant state of rushing, combined with that little knot in my stomach telling me I’m not quite fulfilling all of the needs and roles I should, that brings me to  my current life question; how do we achieve balance ladies?  How do we walk that razor-fine line between boredom and epic, over-commitment melt-down? How do we truly invest, without getting overwhelmed?  How do we learn to let our yes be yes and our no be no? And how do we balance spending time with the people we love and loving the people who need our time? I was sort of prepared for the sleepless nights, changing my daily routine and the mountains of laundry (though honestly, nothing can really ready you for That Much Laundry!), but I had no clue about all the other options moms and women in general have to weigh and consider.

            There are just too many things I
feel I must do, and on top of that, there are the many things I want to do.  Ideally, I would spend my days with my three closest friends, drinking wine or coffee, passing around our babies and concocting kitchen confections or playing outside and occasionally shopping.  The evenings would alternate between quiet family affairs with Jim-Dear, Noodle and I and going out with/having friends over. And to be honest, some of my days look exactly like that. But then there’s the moms group my dear friend helps run that I couldn’t not join, the Bible-study I enjoy but eats up half my day once a week, the book club run by wives of Jim-Dear’s closest friends (who I feel obligated to try and enjoy), the random play-dates with women who want to connect and who, if I had the time, I’m sure I would like and don’t even get me started with the in-laws and all the obligatory events that having all of them live near by entails.

            While the chaos of over-commitment  has just recently come crashing down on my head, I don’t believe this solely a challenge for moms or closet introverts who would secretly prefer to spend their days reading a book on the beach.  No, the more I talk with various friends and acquaintances, the more I find the “schedule-full-to-the-breaking-point-and-no-longer-any-fun” seems to be an almost universal feminine dilemma.  Something about our relational hearts, our empathetic inability to say no, our debilitating self-imposed perfectionism that makes us feel “we should be able to do it all,” means we commit and commit and commit until we are simply a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.  We run late and leave early and are constantly apologizing for never accomplishing all we say we will or think we should. For moms we feel alternating guilt for either not spending enough one-on-one time with our babies or for not exposing them to enough new stimuli. For those who haven’t found a man worth settling down for yet, replace “play-dates” with “first-dates” and worries about your baby getting out with worries about you getting out and it’s the same problem.

            Unfortunately, I only know how much I don’t know when it comes to answering this question. I don’t know how to judge what I need to do and what I can refuse or ignore.  I haven’t learned how to guard free-time when faced with an onslaught of well-meaning invitations.  As of yet, I really don’t have any clue how to balance out this chaotic life of mine.  But my desire is that by admitting out loud that I am a bit of a mess, and I cannot do it all, I am perhaps helping you to do the same.  I am hoping that recognizing the impossible standard I’ve placed on my shoulders of “doing everything I’m asked to” will help me eventually lay that standard down.  And more than anything I’m hoping that reading about my own admission of inadequacies will free a few of you to recognize you also are not required to “do it all,” that perfection is not attained through a maximized planner and if you feel over-whelmed, you are neither a failure nor alone.  In fact, it's our desire to support one another that has landed us in this whole conundrum in the first place!  I’m awfully grateful to my other ladies who lunch, and you girls who have stopped by and lent a sympathetic ear to my self-imposed woes; I cling to the fact that we may be a hot mess, but at least we are in it together. 

And thankfully at the end of each over-full day, waiting patiently in my refrigerator, is a creamy little chunk of cheese, willing to satisfy both my hunger and my desire to once again be unreasonable and completely outside of appropriate portions but very very happy.