I haven’t blogged much in recent weeks because I’ve been preparing to go back to work. Last week was my first full week back at the office, and already I feel swamped, overwhelmed, snowed under by the work. My colleagues did their best to watch over my projects all summer, keeping things going and responding to author queries, but I’m now responsible for getting things to the next level. I’ve also had to travel for a business meeting already: just from Philly to DC, and only for a quick day trip and lunch meeting rather than an overnight, but still. All this while I’m still trying to adjust to pumping breast milk and lugging my Medela InStyle everywhere (including to DC); working out transportation/commuting issues now that my husband F, temporarily home with YogaBaby, can’t just run me to the train station; crying every night when I see my sweet little one look up at me and realize I just missed a whole day of her brand-new life. Discovering, in short, what it means to be a working mother.
The main thing on my mind lately is time. Time has separated itself into two distinct categories: time with my daughter, and time doing anything else. The “anything else” is often necessary (like working is necessary for keeping the little one in diapers), but I’m finding that I want to keep anything not involving the baby to a minimum. When we’re talking about shortening my commute time (by getting me a bike so I don’t have to walk to the train station – which by the way is really fun) or taking a 30-minute lunch so I can get home earlier, that’s one thing, but how do I prioritize yoga and meditation? They’re things I need for myself, to be a healthy person and therefore a good mom, but how do I take that time away from my child when I already by necessity have to be away from her so much? And how do I justify healthy social things – meeting a girlfriend for a drink, or going to a lecture at the library or museum – when first of all I feel like I barely see my kid, and secondly I’m not making enough time for yoga and meditation? It all has to fit in somewhere, right? How? (That’s not a rhetorical question. If you have the answer, please tell me!)
I think, in the near future, that I’m going to try to revisit what the yogic scriptures say about time and reflect on what that may mean in my situation. I’ll post here when I can, and only when it won’t drastically interfere with my baby time. (For example, I wrote this post by hand in the “mothers’ room” at the office while I was pumping, and I’m now typing it up six days later with a sleeping sweetie in a milk coma on my lap.) In the meantime, I’ll try to take a lesson from my YogaBaby and keep my focus on the present moment.
Rox Does Yoga 