Hey Friends,
Do you sometimes seek help from someone whom you consider an adultier adult?
Just yesterday, I called my mom:
Me: Ma!
Ma: What’s wrong?
Me: Can I take a shower if the power is out?
I also recently reached out to a friend:
Me: Hey, do you ever owe taxes?
Friend: No. That’s ghetto.
Me: Okay, then tell me what I’m doing wrong.
We can all agree that it’s okay to not know everything. My question is this:
Why can’t we all agree that it’s okay to not have to do everything on our own?
I write. I teach. I mom. I’ve said, written, and posted this many times. Yet, I don’t do any of this alone. I have support. There are systems in place.
My kids have been on summer break for weeks now. I no longer know what day it is. I for sure can’t tell you what’s for lunch or dinner, and their summer stomachs are fully activated.
Like many children who are blissfully unaware of how life works, they think adulthood means freedom. They can’t wait until they no longer have chores and don’t have to earn their screen time. Ah, the bliss of naïveté. I remember yearning for adulthood. What do I yearn for now?
Affordable groceries
A sleep schedule that sticks
Gas prices that don’t make me sad
The ability to rest without feeling guilty about it
Apparently, adulthood is making one decision after another—whether you want to or not—until you die. Who knew?
Even more surprising is that not all of these decisions are met with concrete resolutions. Nope. That would be too easy. Sometimes, decisions are met with more questions, and you are still held accountable for how things progress. This holds true for our professional and personal lives. There’s no escaping it.
The thing about being human is this: constantly being responsible for someone, something, and even yourself can be exhausting!
Your mental load is YOUR mental load, but it impacts how you see the world and engage with everyone in it. When the time comes that your mental load is too heavy, you’ve got to reexamine what got you in this position and decide what you can let go of. Be honest with yourself. How many of your tasks can you delegate to someone else? Their execution might not be exactly the same as yours, but will the task still get done? Will the world keep on keeping on if you lighten your load just a bit? You’ll never know if you don’t even try.
Quite simply, when you can, pick somebody else to do it. Either try it out or stay tired out. Which will you choose?
Until next Sunday…
- Ash