I don’t know the answer to that question but it hit me yesterday out of nowhere. I woke up and felt tired all of a sudden. It lasted all day and into the evening and still I went to bed later than normal (why do we do that??). Husband has been overseas for work so I’ve been juggling the kids, two drop offs and pick ups to vacation care and day care, all the while continuing my corporate job which I enjoy, wanting to write and be busy, and sorting out our calendar for the next few weeks in order to have a social life and catch up with friends that we haven’t seen for a while. Basically trying to manage our general life.  

Now, normally I’m fine with all that. I’ve always been the type of person that likes to be busy. I remember my mum saying I strive on stress and being busy. And that’s probably true to a point. I get an adrenaline kick when I feel a certain stress. In my previous life as an Event Manager I loved the busyness of pulling everything together and the stress that came with it; things usually went down to the wire and I although I would feel stressed, I could feel the adrenaline kicking in. I do miss that at times – and that’s probably why I’ll continue to organise and put a lot of effort into my boy’s birthday parties for as long as they’ll let me!

However, yesterday I was just done. My eyes stung. I felt like I didn’t want to engage with people. I felt low on fuel. But I still felt that I had a lot to do and had to get it done. Would it have mattered if I didn’t tick an item off my to do list? Probably not. Yet the thought of not achieving…  

On the odd (very odd) occasion my husband and I go to the movies, I get 30 minutes in and I start twitching, shifting in my seat. I’m thinking of other things that need to be done instead of me sitting, enjoying a rare trip to the movies. It feels that there is always so much to do and it’s not considered winning until we do it. Whether that be keeping on top of parenthood, juggling a paying job and parenthood, trying to achieve a golden dream life or elusive work/life balance, whatever it might be.

There’s always a pressing rush to achieve it all, to be in control and on top of things. We can say society has made us that way but in reality, we are society so shouldn’t it be easy for us to release that pressure, that feeling of having to be in control?

Why do we feel that we have to be everything?

How do you manage it all?