Brace yourself for my ground-breaking recommendation for organizational sanity: the three-hole punch.
I know. You’re wondering what else in my house looks like we’re stuck in 1997.
You see, I’d finally surrendered to the idea that I had a ton of documents floating around in hard copy and digital form and that I’d lost control of the situation. And any control I thought I’d had formerly was merely an illusion.
Since my third kid entered preschool and joined the overscheduled lifestyle of her sisters and peers, the volume of e-mail and apps and handouts has grown untenable. Notes on drop off, pick up, whom to call about what, recitals, plays, special days, birthdays.
I actually just received an email with the following subject line: “Tons of Information.”
The medical appointments, too, have ballooned. One appointment begets more appointments. By merely doing the bare minimum as a parent and taking my kids to the dentist, I earned a referral to a specialist on account of my toddler’s suspected impacted tooth and a return to the dentist for another daughter’s fillings. My eldest has entered the realm of orthodontia, which comes with its own set of instructions, appointments, and paperwork.
I’m living in communication quicksand. And aren’t we all?
Some of the items–financial, healthcare etc.--work well in their digital portals. But others defy any sort of electronic wrangling. Class e-mails fall in this category: I can read it, tag it, put it in a specially labeled folder in my gmail. But it might as well be gone, because I’ll probably only come looking for it after I’ve missed the event it announced in the first place.
My middle schooler is learning a lot of executive functioning skills right now: how to stay organized and plan and prepare for short-term and longer-term assignments. And like many things I’m relearning through osmosis these days, I’ve found it quite instructive. Maybe she’s inspired me with her trapper-keeper-type devices and her calendaring, because a few days ago, I pulled the three-hole-punch down from the closet, gathered together discarded binders, and filled them up with my stuff. They are like reference guides. Bus issue? Check the bus rules in the sparkly binder. Need a refresher on the exact parameters of share and tell day? Also the sparkly binder. How about what exactly that doctor said I should be doing? The terrifyingly large black binder. I swear it’s saving my sanity . . . for now.
I’m no Luddite. I really appreciate the advances changing technologies bring. (You better believe my relationships with food delivery apps run strong.) But sometimes an analog approach just works better. I like jogging outside a lot more, sometimes even without headphones. Although I love my Substack cooks, I’m flipping through cookbooks rather than just googling a recipe and keeping my head deep into my iPad. I’m writing lists down by hand. (Loved Elissa Altman’s piece on notebooks.)
I suspect I’m craving something tangible when I’m doing these things. And while I mean that in a literal sense–I want to hold pages or produce or whatever in my hands–I also think I’m struggling to wrap my figurative arms around our current lifestyle.
Maybe it’s not just the technology that needs tweaking.
It’s easy to feel swept up in a current of “this is just how it is” busyness. It’s certainly easier than taking responsibility for my choices or imagining a different set of choices. But I’m thinking more and more about what I’m modeling for my kids. Schedule yourself silly? Cram as much as possible into your weeks and then complain about it? And to what end?
Do you ever fall into the rabbit’s hole of your suggested reels on Instagram? (I think my many weeks of various illnesses have aided my recent descent into my suggestions.) I’m not really sure what the algorithm picked up, but Reels of high schoolers laying bare their stats on college admissions pop up all the time. And once I watched, I was hooked. 4.98 GPA (what even is that?), 32 AP courses, President/Vice President of thirteen non-profits, eight years on the track team, first high schooler in space etc. And by hooked, I mean horrified.
Like so many people, I’ve been paying attention to Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s new book, “Never Enough,” which addresses the current pressures students feel to succeed. (Recommend you listen to Wallace’s interviews with both Kelly Corrigan and Emily Oster) While on Emily Oster’s podcast, Parent Data, Wallace said something that keeps coming back to me each time I see my kids now: “What parents really need to be doing is helping kids develop the kind of life they don’t have to escape from . . . .”
Look, the three-hole punch is actually incredibly helpful. But it would be even more helpful if I used my status as an adult to create better boundaries for my children, to protect their childhood, their sleep, and their sanity. To reframe success outside of busyness and accolades and resume. It’s hard to do much of anything introspective when you’re stuck in quicksand though. Afterall, you’re just trying to survive.
[books]
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
[things that caught my eye]
I keep thinking about this heart-breaking yet fortifying essay author Amy Ettinger wrote about her terminal illness.
On writing, really enjoyed Caroline Cala Donofrio’s thoughts on the personal essay and Matt Bell’s examination of writing and running.
Got a kick out of Purnima Mani’s ode to Middle Schoolers.
If you need some more perspective on the childcare/maternal care/schooling crisis in the US, read this essay with proposed bipartisan approaches by Alyssa Rosenberg and Marc Thiessen.
Watched Lucky Hank and Special Forces: Lioness—two completely different genres. Highly recommend Lucky Hank. But Special Forces: Lioness only if you’re married to someone who was in the military (-:
Picked up these gorgeous pottery cups from Julie Wiggins at the Mint Museum’s Potters Market.
[best thing I made]
In full honesty, I haven’t made anything wonderful recently. We’ve battled many viral illnesses since school started and our dinners have been at best perfunctory. I’m planning to make Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread cookies soon!