Parents of young children don’t get days off.  It sounds trite and obvious, but not until you become a parent of small children do you understand the stark, relentless reality of what ‘no days off’ means.  It means no weekends, no sick leave, no mental health days, no impulse activities, no dropping everything at a moment’s notice.  You’re on 24 hour shifts every day and there’s no paid overtime.  The younger the children are, the harder it is to find people who can actually replace you, even temporarily, which means every bit of time you have free of your children is hard-won, or intensely negotiated.

Writers don’t get days off, either. Few people who work for an employer understand that the self-employed value their time differently.  They have to, because there is no automatic system to denote ‘work time,’ ‘play-time,’ ‘rest-time.’  A writer, particularly a writer under deadline, can be working at any time, even if they appear to be staring into space.  They can be working in the middle of the night, when they wake up and can’t get back to sleep.  Every piece of media they consume has an element of ‘work thought’ attached to it.  Most intense is the power of ‘I should be writing.’

Because there is no true way to measure true progress of a book (wordcount is commonly used but imperfect, as one day’s 500 words might take half an hour and another day’s might involve working under great tension for 6-8 hours) other than a vague movement from ‘unfinished’ to ‘finished,’ the working writer lives with a great deal of uncertainty.  How much is enough to get the job done?  The guilt can set in at any time.

I’ve been well trained by this guilt over the years, between writing to deadling and the life of the postgrad student.  And yes, there were years when ‘I should be writing my novel’ and ‘I should be writing my thesis’ overlapped each other.  Stressful, stressful times. Mind you, I currently have a school-age daughter, a baby daughter, a small business run from home and two novel deadlines for 2010, so it’s hard to imagine a time when I had a trickier Guilt-Work balance than I do right now.

The benefit of being a writer is that you can do it anywhere.  The downside is that you can do it anywhere, and thus there is the internal pressure that you should.  We tell ourselves things like ‘ah I can get plenty of work done on the weekend,’ forgetting that the weekend is not designed for work, and it is in many ways a socially subversive thing to do – carving work time out on days that everyone else denotes as ‘holiday/social/relaxing time’ is harder than you think it will be.  My particular weakness is that gap between Christmas/New Years – I always think that will be a great, productive writing time and every single time I am surprised that it is not.

Writing is simultaneously one of the best and worst kinds of job to combine with being a stay-at-home parent.  Basically this means you have two ‘flexible’ full-time jobs (even if writing is only part-time for you, being a stay-at-home parent counts as 1.5 jobs at the very least) which are constantly at war with each other.  That doesn’t even take housework into account, another of those charmingly bottomless pit jobs in which one can always do more, should one have the time…

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do as a writer (or any kind of self-employed person whose day to day calendar is their own) is to declare boundaries for your work.  A common one, known in Australian spec-fic circles as ‘the Sean Williams,’ though he certainly did not invent the concept, is to denote a regular minimum achievement such as a daily word count, which allows you to feel the warm glow of day’s work achieved, and to guilt-free get on with all your other commitments.

It’s only in recent years that I have allowed myself weekends for family time.  When I’m writing to deadline, I now treat weekdays and weekends differently.  This means of course that I can and often do achieve various levels of workness on weekends, but I can not work if I need to not work.  It felt rather revolutionary to not have a to do list for the weekend… I’ve got out of the weekend habit thanks to the baby and NaNoWriMo, but I need to reinstate it because it really does save my sanity.

And yes, we’re at that time of year when many of us take on yet another part-time job, that is “Christmas” with all its associated shopping, posting, socialising, extra family commitments, extra catering, extra extra extra.  (and yet somehow convincing ourselves that these holidays will be particularly productive because hope springs eternal).

Today I took a day off. I sort of figured I needed to, as I had developed a twitch on my eyelid and a foot-grinding habit which I suspect signifies stress.  I let Raeli skip out of daycare so we could go to a picnic  godieyeva had set up for a few friends with small children at the Botanical Gardens.  In between the military operation that was getting there, setting up, packing up and leaving, we (the grown ups) actually managed to have some moments of calm and relaxation.  Mostly while reminiscing about our pre-parenting days when summers and picnics and lazy days did not need to be planned down to the last second. The kids of course had a ball, and were reluctant to leave.

I had promised Raeli an afternoon at Kidz Bizz, and it seemed sensible to do that today, since she was home from daycare anyway, and the sensible thing to do would be to consider today a write-off as far as Work was concerned (in the hopes that some work might still sneakily get itself done).  Yes, I know. But it made sense at the time.  The picnic was early so we could flop at home for a couple of hours, then go to the adventure indoor playground.  My original plans for Kidz Bizz had involved my laptop but remembering how well that went last time (hi, Melander!) I instead packed a book, my iPod full of excellent ebooks and podcasts, and my shiny new notebook courtesy of the AsIf Fairy. I had given up on ticking off any items of my to do list, but half-thought of noodling about on my Sprawl short story (my Sprawl short story is not actually on my current to do list which is how I have managed to write so much of it – I pretend it’s recreation). And if not I could get some of that reading done, relaxing with my earbuds blocking out the screams and hollers. I might even be extra civilised and order a latté.

The flopping went well – Jem went down for a long nap, Raeli hung out with Sesame Street, and I lay on the bed and read two volumes of Fruit Basket in quick succession (BLISS).  I would have loved to spend the rest of the afternoon thus, but Raeli is not the kind of girl who forgets a promise.  Off we went with the recently-awakened baby, only to discover that Kids Bizz closes at 3pm on most weekdays.  Gah.  The only substitute as far as Raeli was concerned was the boat park at Dru Point which is just as much fun for her but not nearly as much for me – outside, full sun everywhere, not in anyway allowing for casual semi-work time.

So yes. I sucked it up and embraced the day off.  I drove the girls to Dru Point, found the closest thing to shade I could, let Raeli run around the park and get hot and finally played a kick-arse game of pirates with her on the wooden boat from which the park gets its name.  Jem was the ship’s baby, in true Arthur Ransome style.  Raeli let me be captain.  We hoisted the mainsail, swabbed the decks, and made an imaginary captive called Pete walk the plank (I explained to Raeli that the ‘rank’ of ‘name, rank and serial number’ meant we were asking what his job was, and she reported to me that his job was “doing the housework just like Cinderella.”  Poor old Pete.

Yes, it was fun. Yes, I feel more relaxed than when I started. Possibly. Anyway, my eyelid is not twitching.

Now we’re at home again, recovering from our holiday day, watching Mamma Mia.  ["oh a nice relaxing choice," said I. "Don't be silly, Mummy," said she, "Getting married isn't relaxing." Oh good, I'll remember that argument next time she tries to marry me and her Daddy off in the hopes of being a flower girl.] The To Do List is exactly the same length as it was yesterday, the house looks like a bomb hit it, and I’m okay with that.  Tomorrow can be a work day.  Before, you know, the school holidays starts.

Oh, help.

Tags: family, jem, raeli, writing