How I’m Navigating Quarantine
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You are probably all wondering how a stay-at-home parent extraordinaire like me is faring during this new normal of, well, constantly staying at home.
I’m sure literally no one is actually wondering that, but I am still more than happy to let you know.
We’ve been muddling through distance learning with a second grader and kindergartner, letting the kids watch tons of YouTube and play tons of Minecraft, and when my daughter runs into the table, taking her to my wife’s hospital so my wife can come out to the parking lot and repair her face with surgical tape instead of risking a visit to urgent care to get stitches.
You know, the normal stuff everyone is doing.
The children have been sleeping even worse than they usually do. Our oldest struggles to get to sleep now and either my wife or I have to lay in his room sometimes until ten or eleven o’clock. When it’s my turn to do the lying in the dark, my writing time for the day evaporates virtually to zero, which is actually fine with me because I haven’t felt particularly inspired anyway. (And yes, I realize I could type on my phone while I’m lying there, but then who would take over the important job of switching between Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for two to three hours?)
Our younger two children continue to get up and play musical beds in the middle of the night every night, so my sleep time is also curtailed. Luckily, unlike my wife, I’m a heavy sleeper so I can fall back to sleep easily in kids’ beds or with kids whacking me in the face. My wife’s light sleeping means she definitely gets the short end of the sleeping stick.
On the work front — yes, there is a work front — things have been uneven, but mostly decent. I don’t talk about this much, but at some point in the past year or two, I effectively transitioned from a stay-at-home parent to a work-from-home parent. I started adding a freelance writing client or other gig here and there and it has become fairly consistent. I lost one client this month due to the economic collapse and I had to let another job go because I didn’t have time for it with the kids home, but I still have my main ad copy writing job that is bizarre, but relatively consistent.
I say bizarre, because the nature of the work is such that projects come in all day and you have a matter of minutes or seconds to claim them before they close. This leads to a great deal of browser refreshing, buy my obsessiveness allows me to flourish.
My wife continues to work at the hospital as a labor and delivery nurse so I’m anxious literally all of the time and constantly checking my temperature and the temperatures of everyone in my general vicinity.
Distance learning continues to be a challenge, not least because I honestly don’t care that much if my children complete their assignments, so it’s difficult for me to muster the focus and discipline necessary to keep them on task. Our second grader has done an excellent job overall. He likes to get his work done in the morning, so he can have the rest of the day free. His only hang up is writing, which he hates, but that’s completely understandable.
Dealing with our kindergartener is a bit more difficult, but at least his weekly Google Meet sessions with his teachers are adorable. He sits at his chair holding a stuffed animal on his lap, alternately burying his face in it or bouncing it on his legs to calm his nerves.
He is in a dual-language program, so he has a virtual meeting each week with his English and Spanish teachers. They do sight words or numbers and talk about the stories he’s been reading and what kind of dogs he has.
The distance learning operates through Google accounts, so when I’m not working or playing or doing laundry or dishes, I’m usually logging in and out of various Google accounts and closing and re-opening internet browsers on multiple devices in an attempt to determine whose account I’m logged into at any given moment. This is actually one of my favorite quarantine pastimes.
But the main takeaway here is that to cope with everything I’ve given up. Not in the big picture, depressive way you might be imagining (well yeah, a little of that too), but specifically I’ve given up attempting to compartmentalize anything or “maintain balance.”
The fact is, as long as we’re all home together, I’m going to work, parent, and maybe even cook and clean the house a little at the same time. I keep working — even though my main job is one I can choose to not do at any time — partly because we need the money and partly because even if I’m not passionate about the work, I do love the pace and routine of it.
So, while my kids still come first, I am going to let them watch extra TV or play extra video games so I can do some of the things I need to do. And I’m going to try my best not to indulge that nagging voice that always tells me I should put everything aside and play with my kids every second I can while they’re still little and want to play with me.
There will still be plenty of doll time and trying to make them fall down on the trampoline and obstacle courses and all their favorite activities they want me to participate in, but I will also keep trying to do things I enjoy. Like refreshing my browser and updating my spreadsheets, for example.
Because it’s not about balance right now, it’s all about survival. Literally and figuratively.
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