Feel this all deeply — I have a toddler, am massively pregnant, about to have two under two and still every day spending hours and hours thinking about my career, how to manage it all, whether or not it’s even manageable!!! I found your substack through your recent Motherwell essay which I loved as well. Thanks for your generous openness in your writing
Great post. Relavent, relatable, deep, and personal. Like a good sermon manuscript! I want to know the answer to this problem. Is it compromise and acceptance?
Oh, Bradley, you and your "answers!" You know I don't have any of those!
Jk. I do think people who operate under the supposition that they can't have everything they want make fundamentally different choices than people who assume they (eventually) can. This is a weakness of unchecked liberalism, IMO—the mindset often presupposes an achievable utopia. I think we make better choices when we approach problems with the mindset that, no matter what, something is almost always lost and something gained. With some caveats (that I will call grace), the earth is a closed system.
One "answer" is to teach young people that loss is not an aberration. Other cultures do that far better. As adults, we just try to hold the tension between giving up (on the one end) and ceaseless striving (on the other). So yeah, acceptance that is not nihilistic resignation.
I feel this one deeply. As a woman trying to “have it all” and then being frustrated that I’m exhausted. When weighing what to say no to in order to say yes to something else, but finding nothing I’m willing to let go of, so I just add the next yes on top and pretend the piper I’ll have to pay doesn’t exist...*sigh* It’s that constant striving to zip on all of those “skins” (Buffalo Bill vibes in that sentence!) Anyways, thanks for putting words to this.
Haha yeah that skins thing can get creepy real quick. It's that fundamental acknowledgment that I **have to let go of things** that is so hard for me. Thanks for reading.
Feel this all deeply — I have a toddler, am massively pregnant, about to have two under two and still every day spending hours and hours thinking about my career, how to manage it all, whether or not it’s even manageable!!! I found your substack through your recent Motherwell essay which I loved as well. Thanks for your generous openness in your writing
Oh thank you!! I'm so glad you're here. Hang in there. I got aches just reading about you being massively pregnant. ;)
Great post. Relavent, relatable, deep, and personal. Like a good sermon manuscript! I want to know the answer to this problem. Is it compromise and acceptance?
Oh, Bradley, you and your "answers!" You know I don't have any of those!
Jk. I do think people who operate under the supposition that they can't have everything they want make fundamentally different choices than people who assume they (eventually) can. This is a weakness of unchecked liberalism, IMO—the mindset often presupposes an achievable utopia. I think we make better choices when we approach problems with the mindset that, no matter what, something is almost always lost and something gained. With some caveats (that I will call grace), the earth is a closed system.
One "answer" is to teach young people that loss is not an aberration. Other cultures do that far better. As adults, we just try to hold the tension between giving up (on the one end) and ceaseless striving (on the other). So yeah, acceptance that is not nihilistic resignation.
I feel this one deeply. As a woman trying to “have it all” and then being frustrated that I’m exhausted. When weighing what to say no to in order to say yes to something else, but finding nothing I’m willing to let go of, so I just add the next yes on top and pretend the piper I’ll have to pay doesn’t exist...*sigh* It’s that constant striving to zip on all of those “skins” (Buffalo Bill vibes in that sentence!) Anyways, thanks for putting words to this.
Haha yeah that skins thing can get creepy real quick. It's that fundamental acknowledgment that I **have to let go of things** that is so hard for me. Thanks for reading.
Damn, tradeoffs can be rough. Why can’t we have it all!? 🤣
I’m still mad at Sheryl Sandberg for that Lean In book. Also, love me some queso.
Right?! That book was such BS.
Should be “Lean Back”