When Self-Care is Just One More Thing to Schedule
My family recently joined our local YMCA. My daughters were interested in several of their youth programs, and it just made more sense to get a membership. At the time, my husband and I thought we’d also take advantage of the gym, but that hasn’t really happened. Balancing our varying work schedules with our kids’ extracurriculars and childcare has meant one of us might get to work out once a week. Earlier this week, my husband asked if we could work out a schedule that would actually allow us to take turns going to the gym so that we could each at least go twice a week. It was a simple enough request, and not at all unreasonable, but I found myself overwhelmed by the idea.
Lately, it feels like there are just too many things to schedule. Two nights a week and every Saturday morning, we’re committed to extracurricular activities for my girls. As a teacher, I average one or two evening commitments a month. And between recurring appointments for some of us and semi-annual appointments for everyone, it feels like we hardly go a week without someone having an appointment scheduled. In fact, just last week, I had a parent-teacher conference and my youngest had swim lessons on Wednesday, my oldest had an extracurricular on Thursday, and my husband also had an appointment that day, my oldest had an appointment on Friday, and my youngest had an extracurricular on Saturday – and that wasn’t an unusual week.
And scheduling all of those appointments certainly isn’t easy. Since I am a teacher, I do my best to schedule appointments after school so that I don’t have to take off work (which always creates more work!), but after-school appointments are very difficult to get. And nearly everyone I’ve talked to lately has expressed frustration over how difficult it is to schedule just about any appointment – they have to be scheduled months ahead of time, and you’d better pray that nothing else important comes up because rescheduling will push you back a few more months.
Of course, beyond the extracurriculars and the appointments, all the routine and unexpected needs have to be fit in. We have to make time for cleaning and laundry and meal planning and grocery shopping and errand running, and that’s assuming no one gets any social invitations. A fair chunk of my weekends in September were spent searching physical and online stores for spirit week attire and Halloween costumes, and with the holidays around the corner, I’ll be making lists of people to buy for and lists of gift ideas and then trying to figure out when I have time to shop for things in the midst of the end-of-semester blitz. And, of course, I must prioritize quality family time and create holiday magic for my girls.
It’s a lot to juggle, so I can’t help but panic when asked to add one more thing to the calendar, even if it’s for me. The suggestion that I can just make time for myself negates all the other things that have to be prioritized. More than likely, if something had to be moved or cancelled, the me-time I booked would be the first and easiest thing to sacrifice. Even if I did prioritize myself, I’d likely spend most of the time thinking about all the other things that needed to be done instead of enjoying the time for myself.
I know self-care is important, and I understand the consequences of not taking time for myself, but the things that cause me so desperately to need a break are the very things that can make it so hard to take one. In the end, it often feels like taking care of myself is just one more thing to take care of, and scheduling me-time is just one more thing to schedule. I might be able to pencil in a mini mommy meltdown some afternoon after work, but more than likely, I’ll have to reschedule because something else came up.
