There is a saying I've heard many times over the years: If everything's important, nothing's important.

It rings true. It really does. But the problem comes when there are enough things that actually are important that it becomes impossible to accomplish them all.

This started to happen to me when I began teaching. Being a first-year teacher is a fresh hell reserved for only the most naive and masochistic of us. You've got to have the right combination of drive, stubbornness, and support if you're going to get out of there alive, and there were times when I didn't know if I would. The learning curve is so steep that there's always a hundred things you don't know and a thousand things you know but suck at actually doing.

And the kids can smell it.

After five years, I thought I had the hang of teaching - and then I moved to a new school at a new grade level and got to be terrible all over again. Only this time, there were state tests and network-wide initiatives and, well, more things to suck at. There was the teaching, which happened during the school day, but there was also the lesson planning, which generally happened before and after the school day. Everything was so important (and being a teacher is so miserable unless you're decent at it) that I spent hours each day trying to get things just right so I could do something other than fall apart when I was actually in front of kids. Even so, I'd close my computer at 11:00 each night, knowing what I had wasn't quite good enough, but so exhausted I could do no more.

It was a constant state of failure - one that never truly went away.

Having children is a similar state of perpetual shortcoming. There's always something I know I should be doing, but I just can't. If I'm doing well on meal planning, I'm doing a bad job of spending time with the kids. If I'm keeping consistent behavioral expectations, I'm doing a bad job of cleaning the house. And if I'm doing a fantastic job at all the parenting things (which is a dream, let's be real), then there's a 100% chance I'm failing at doing anything for myself. I'm not working out, I'm not reading enough, I'm not doing well at my job.

There's simply not time in the day for it all.

So what do I do? I go in phases. Sometimes I feel like a really good mom. Some days I do really well at my job. Others my writing shines like Aladdin's lamp.

But never all at once.

It's survival mode at its finest, and I've been living here for my entire adult life.

I read a book recently - The Islanders by local Massachusetts writer, Meg Mitchell Moore. I enjoyed the book quite thoroughly, and I identified hard with the character Lu, an at-home parent who aspires to have a career. She's speaking with another rock-star female character, Joy, who says something that tightens my shoulders even now.

"We can't have it all. We have to pick."

Lu's response is desperate, and tears sprung to my eyes when I read it. "You're wrong," she says. "You have to be wrong." I feel those words in my soul.

People will say to prioritize. They'll say it's impossible for one person to do all the things. But it can't be. Because if I have to pick, I'll inevitably pick everyone else over myself. And so I pick survival mode. Catching one of a thousand balls before they all clang to the ground, occasionally asking a kid, partner, or friend to chase after one as it bounces away. But mainly I pick everything, because I can't be whole if I have to choose.

So what's a person to do when everything's important? A person who wants to be a good parent, while at the same time having a career and a self that exist outside? Will it always be survival mode, or is there hope?

Share your story in the comments.

I feel your bass
drum kick, boom-boom,
up near my
heart and so
forceful it can be
seen and not just
felt.

Then comes in the
bass guitar, rolling left
to right, slapping
in rhythmic
time, the vibrations
complementing the
backbeat in my
ribcage.

Your hands stay
folded up next to your
smushed-up face, all
the way down
low, until
showtime, and then
fingers glide and
flutter, finding the
keys in the
dark.

I tap along,
fingers drumming the
snare, toes tapping the
high hat, humming lead
guitar to the tune
of who cares because
it’s just you and
me here.

Some times you are
acoustic, swaying
gently as if we have
nowhere to be and
you are content
to stay inside
forever.

Others you plug
in and make yourself
unmistakably known and I
wonder what choreography you’re
learning in there, and if
you’ll remember it when
you’re out.

Or, perhaps more
likely, we’ll settle
in to a new
sound, a new
song, a new
dance, just you
and me.
​
Except this time,
like it or not,
there will be vocals.