As a parent of young kids, I pretty much live in a constant state of FOMO. It’s not about an occasional date or making plans with friends. We’re able to do those things. What I miss is a consistent block of time in my weekly schedule for a sustained amount of time to work on one thing, a craft or a class for example. Right now, I don’t feel like I can finish a sentence half the time, let alone a project. 

I listen to a lot of podcasts. One might say it’s too many podcasts. But occasionally I’ll listen to one that’s an interview of an artist or a writer who has recently done something amazing. They often give advice or explain how they were able to accomplish such a feat. It usually involves something like, “I write for 5 hours everyday,” or “I go for a 2-hour walk to begin each morning, and then I sit down to work in complete silence and sometimes don’t get up for 4 hours.” My reaction to these people goes through a cycle of being inspired to being jealous to being deeply cynical. “They must not have kids,” becomes my mental response to all of them. In my cynical state, I turn my kids into villains and the sole reason I don’t have time to do something artistic or spend more time writing or whatever hobby du jour. 

I do not actually believe this is my kids’ fault. There’s no one at fault. There are choices and priorities. We chose to have kids. I’m still super pleased with this choice but don’t judge or fault people who choose not to have kids. Right now, at this stage of life, there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to take care of kids, work, AND have time for developing and perfecting skills. I know it won’t always be like this or feel like this. But there is a blame cycle I go through because some people really do amazing, miraculous things while taking care of kids, and I feel like there’s something wrong with me that I can’t seem to figure out that balance.

So I think there are two things going on here: 1. I miss having autonomy. I hadn’t realized that the ability to spend 3 hours focused on one task was important to me until I couldn’t really do it anymore, at least not without some considerable planning. And 2. I need to continue the process of doing things I want to do while either including my kids or setting them up with their own things while I do my thing. This might seem obvious to you, but I would tend to get frustrated and just give up on my thing if they kept interrupting me. My time allotments need to be adjusted if I do it this way, but in the long run, it’ll be good for them to see that Mom has her own interests.

I share this story not to imply that I have anything solved. This feels like a case of me being behind the 8-ball and every good parent already knows how to have hobby time without it feeling like they’re destroying their kids’ weekends. But maybe you struggle with this too, and that’s ok. We’re all just figuring this out.