“You don't want to miss this, mom!”

This is me, literally this morning.

We're at the skate park. No childcare this week, which doesn't mean I'm off work. It means I'm doing both (so hubby can keep his bosses happy while mine, me, has to put up with it).

One eye on the ramp, one thumb on my phone, trying to claw back twenty minutes of the work that doesn't pause just because the kids are home.

“Mom, watch.”

Just a sec.

“Mom, you don't want to miss this. Mom.”

One second. Let me just finish this.

“Mom… MOM.”

And I snap: “Can I NOT hear ‘mom’ for at least 30 seconds PLEASE?”

At the kid, for interrupting the work I was doing at the park I was at with him.

I was mothering and working in the exact same minutes. Not really watching the skate trick, not really getting the work done either.

Doing both badly and feeling guilty about both.

And they feel it.

“You don't want to miss this” was my son still inviting me in, from two meters away, while half of me was at work.

And I nearly missed it anyway.

The advice for this is always “Optimization”. Find a better system. Time-block your calendar until it looks like a game of Tetris. Hold on tight to your boundaries.

Do both, just do them smarter.

But no system makes one hour hold two. Efficiency is a great answer to a different question. It doesn't touch the actual problem, which is that you're trying to be in two places inside one body, and there's only one of you.

You can't out-organize being two people at once.

Lunch time, I finally did the thing I hate doing. I decided what was going to lose today.

The kids were getting more TV than I'd planned.

Work was getting two hours. Whatever didn't fit inside it could be annoyed with me tomorrow.

And my partner was taking the kids for those two hours (I didn't ask particularly sweetly but… we'll let that one go 😅).

Before I started, I put eight minutes on a timer and did the thing that gets my body out of the red.

Then I worked. Noise-cancelling headphones on. Two hours.

What surprised me was how quiet my head got once I'd stopped trying to keep every option alive.

Ten tabs had been open since 7am. Laundry. Work. Kids. Groceries. Dishwasher. Lunch. Emails. Being present. Being productive. Being the mom who planned a lovely week off.

I hadn't closed any of them because closing one felt like failing at it, and that was exactly the most exhausting part.

I'm writing this now while my kids watch the TV I wasn't going to let them watch this much of.

My two hours are done, my newsletter is written AND my shoulders aren't somewhere around my ears anymore.

We're going for ice cream.

This morning he had to say: “Mom, you don't want to miss this.” This afternoon, he won't have to.

On the day when everything matters and none of it fits, ask: What am I willing to be bad at today?

Pick it on purpose.

Maybe dinner is cereal. Maybe they watch too much TV. Maybe that email waits. Maybe you're not the fun mom today.

Something is going to give anyway. You might as well be the one who chooses it.

This one I ask the moms I work with. And myself, this morning.

"Why is choosing what NOT to do so much harder than trying to do everything?”

Because trying to keep everything going still lets you believe you might pull it off.

Choosing means admitting something isn't getting done. Someone might be disappointed.

And if you're used to being the person who handles things, choosing what drops can feel worse than carrying too much.

Until carrying too much starts choosing for you.