Pressures of working motherhood
When I was in college and grad school, I was convinced that I produce my best work under pressure. Nearly all of my papers were written at the very last minute. Some of them were good enough to merit an A, but they were almost always done when there was no option left but to sit down and work. It was such a beautiful time.
Fast forward to now. I am a mother of three who works full time from home. My oldest child is in school all day. The other two are home with me all day. This means that there is no "break" from parenting to go to the office. I have learned to balance mothering and working at the very same time. Every day. My work tasks always get done because they must. I have mastered this whole role so well by now that I don't even think about it.
Even so, I sometimes find myself wondering what the heck I meant back then when I said I work well under pressure. What pressure? My only real responsibility was to pass my classes. The clubs I led and the ones in which I participated were optional. No one would have gone hungry if I just wrote my essays or read my books from 9:30am to 5pm without me feeding him or her. No one needed a diaper change, that I knew of. What did I know about working under pressure?
Working under pressure now, for me, means taking care of two tiny people while fulfilling the duties of an employment contract that I wholeheartly signed up for. It means knowing that at any given moment, I will have to resolve a toddler's meltdown while I also tend to my assignment for the day. It means sometimes working with one hand and feeding a child with another. Pressure now means that I have to practice being cool, calm, and collected under the knowledge that real humans are depending on me at home and elsewhere.
They say practice makes perfect. Perhaps now that I am in this new role, I am not fooling myself when I say I work well under pressure. I do. I enjoy my work. And I love parenthood. The opportunity to combine them both in my every day life is an unmatched win.
