Jun 11, 2021
A shout from the bottom of my heart
I’m turning 30 in a few weeks. What I am experiencing is probably not an existential-crisis-magnitude, but it’s a crisis for sure.
Background story:
My daughter is two years old, so it’s been 2 years I’ve dealt with this new responsibility and dynamic as a mother. Few minutes before I wrote this, my daughter was crying in her sleep because she wanted me to sleep by her side. She falls asleep around 9.50pm every night, and right after that I always go back to work. I thought about a lot of things as I put her to bed, every single time. A lot of work stuff. And I feel that she can sense that, hence the cries.
Being a new mom, and at the same time crafting a new path in a new company, in a new role, with ambitious targets, and juggling everything else — man, it’s been hard as hell. And this is the part where I think women stop climbing the ladder even if the guys lean in, because, physically-mentally-everything really-just makes it hard for women to juggle all those.
Me before kid: spent my morning with exercise, 5x a week, home-cooked meals at least 50% of the time, sometimes I even sold catering or cooked food for my colleagues, date nights and times to hangout with friends.
Me after kid (and pandemic): 0 exercise, constant issues with my metabolism, 90% takeaway food, long hours of work, constant feeling of guilt, a lot of times feeling like a failure, and immense joy seeing her grow, develop so many new skills (a lot of them are very entertaining), strained relationship with so many other people, including family.
It just feels impossible sometimes.
And there’s this unhealthy relationship with work that I find. The fact that I find work as my “sanctuary”, “getaway”, “ways to make impact” and “place to be me and roar”, I guess I tend to dedicate a lot of time in it, maybe become addicted to it and the vicious cycle begins. The work becomes never ending, and its becoming hard to separate from the usual life I had. Relationships went sour, another tons of guilt. It goes on.
Off topic, but one thing that also bothers me is that, there are things that can’t be bought by money, one of which is wisdom. I am so grateful to find that I learned a lot in my current role, and to find that I have so much to prove, including that wisdom to be put into practice.
Wisdom that you need in making tons of decisions, from the tiny little ones to the more intricate, complicated ones. Wisdom in accepting what you can and cannot do, in accepting the love for imperfection, in dealing with the everyday challenge so that we can keep on holding on, regardless of how crazy the day has been. Wisdom in making peace with what have happened, in prioritizing right, not to get trapped in the wrong sides. Oh……
So, tell me, what crisis am I in?
