I.

My day is interrupted by a puking child, and…

No. Not like that. Interrupted?

The definition of interrupt:

• Stop the continuous progress of (an activity or process)
• Stop (someone speaking) by saying or doing something.
• Break the continuity of (a line or surface)
• Obstruct (something, especially a view).

(So says the Oxford English Dictionary, which also adds, btw, this:

“Late Middle English: from Latin interrupt- ‘broken, interrupted’, from the verb interrumpere, from inter- ‘between’ + rumpere ‘to break’.”

– I learned something new, and now so did you.)

But for something to be interrupted… there has to be an expectation that it won’t be. An assumption that the activity will be continuous—that you will get to finish your sentence—that the line will go on forever, or at least for a while.

So. My day is NOT interrupted by a puking child. Let’s try this again.

II.

My sleep is interrupted… No, here I go again…

Take three:

I’m in that marvellous liminal morning place of sleep-not-sleep, and I am thinking I will wake—soon, but not just yet—when I hear footsteps on the ceiling (on the ceiling, yes), and then footsteps tramping down the stairs—doors opening—laundry bags being stepped on—and… there he is. In the crook of my arm, not quite as long as I am yet but definitely not small, and yet in that moment of crawling into bed beside me, so tiny.

He doesn’t whisper, “Upstairs?” as is his way when he wakes up before me or Sean. He just curls into me. And wiggles. “Maggie?” he says, searching for the dog in the dark.

I shush him.

“Your Dadda has to get up so early today, he needs to sleep until it’s time. Be still.” He stills, a little.

But Sean gives up on the remnants of sleep and gets up before his alarm clock.

Ender falls asleep, in my arms, for a while.

I don’t.

I mind-wander. Sad thoughts, happy thoughts. Heart-piercing, heart-breaking thoughts.

But happy thoughts too.

I like thinking.

At some point, my eyes are wet and I can’t exactly say I like that, but… it’s part of the experience.

Ender stirs beside me, awake in a flash. Starts to torment the dog.

“Upstairs?” I whisper to him.

He’s out of bed almost before I finish the sentence. Me, I stretch. Rub my eyes, forehead, neck. Sneek a peak at my phone.

6:17.

Early.

Ugh.

By the time I follow Ender upstairs, he’s already ensconced in one of the armchairs in the kitchen and wrapped in a blanket. Sean’s made coffee and I play the game I’m playing these days every morning, with every cup. Yes? No? A choice? A compulsion?

I pour a cup. Drink half of it while it’s hot… pour the cold remains down the sink later. A choice. Not a compulsion.

Sean’s got a 9 am presentation that he’s still refining, so I get Ender his cereal before going back downstairs with the coffee. Sit down in the space-that-is-me and write the morning pages.

Don’t whine in them very much, although at one point my eyes do get wet again.

Then—work. The tasks I MUST do first thing in the morning. And—go. Tedious. Unfulfilling. Necessary. Not ideal—I will not schedule a project like this again. My mornings need to belong to creative work, not this. These thoughts dance in the back of my head—but the front of it is all focused, disciplined, working.

About to be interrupted—but no.

It’s not an interruption if you know it’s coming.

“I need to cuddle.”

Ender in my armpit, under my blankets. I wonder if the reason I work on a couch, on the floor, on a chaisez-lounge is this? So I can accommodate one child, two, three while I write?

It’s hard to type AND cuddle an eight-year-old at a desk, in an office chair.

It’s not, by the way, an idyllic moment.

He keeps on grabbing my right arm. And I keep on snapping. We have a deal, Ender and I—the mornings are MINE and he can come into my space and BE with me. But I am working. I am not HIS at that time. He can be present—but all he gets is my presence. No interactions. Except ones that sound like this:

“I need my arm to do my work, stop pulling on it.”

“Ender, baby, you know this is my work time.”

“For fuck’s sake, stop yanking on my arm!”

He wiggles down and curls around my feet.

I do my work.

Get to the goal I set out as my “finish” for the morning stretch.

He says it this time before I do:

“Upstairs?”

Upstairs.

Upstairs, I make him his second breakfast and myself my first. And I break a rule—a new friend sends me a text that brings a smile to my face and so I text back (more on my texting rule later, maybe)—and I am flirting and moving around in the kitchen and trying to plan the day—I’ll read a bit with Ender, make sure Flora eats protein for breakfast when she wakes up—but then, I’ll probably be able to get the second block of my work done, and then, in the afternoon, will I have time to…

And that’s when Ender comes into the kitchen, and pukes all over the kitchen floor.

III.

My week, by the way, has looked sort of like this:

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But of course, this is only the public part of the story.

IV.

I’m trying to read, for the second time, Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I’m reading it because I got it as a birthday present for Sean, because he heard Rubin on a podcast talking about how different personality types are motivated and thought she was insightful and because he is very interested what makes people happy.

I’ve tried reading it before, when it was first released and there were 64 people ahead of me on the holds list for it at the public library. When my turn to read it arrived… Rubin lost me in February.

This time, I’ve persevered til June. I’m looking for the nuggets. But it’s hard.

Rubin’s relentless search for happiness (while claiming she is very happy to begin with) exhausts me. Really, that is what’s happening: as I read about her resolutions, projects, and initiative—I feel utterly drained.

It’s fascinating.

Her frantic energy vibes off the page and into my rather sensitive and strained… shall we be New Agey and call it aura? … I don’ t know. Something. Her frantic energy infects me. And not in a good way. Reading about her quest for happiness is decreasing mine.

It’s kind of interesting.

Also, insightful, although perhaps not in the way Rubin intended.

I’m not sure if I will persevere with the book through to December. It does have some good stuff, and quotes and insights from others, and I was going to pull one out for you, but I can’t find it, and really, fuck it, because the point is–Rubin’s desire to be even more happy (while denying that she’s unhappy) is making me tired.

And even those of her insights that resonate with me… I think we apply these insights in very different ways.

Anyway.

Happiness.

Sean is also reading—er, listening to—Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. The subtext of which—or maybe its main point, actually—is that chasing happiness does not make people happy.

We talk about that for a bit on Thursday night. About the difference between “happy” and “meaningful.”

I am, right now, definitely not happy. Oh, I have moments of joy and pleasure. And even the occasional second of bliss.

But happy?

No.

And I don’t even want to be happy.

But let’s not talk about that today.

V.

I send Ender to the bathroom to wash his face and hands and I clean the kitchen floor. Settle him in bed with a puke bowl and his iPad.

“And Mommy?” he asks.

So my office for the rest of the morning is his sickbed, and I do most of my work with my left hand, as he convulsively holds onto my right.

When he falls asleep, I go downstairs and feed Flora protein, although it’s more lunch than breakfast now.

I should sit down and work. I start to draft this post instead—it seems important.

VI.

I don’t want to be happy or chase happiness, but I don’t want to be dysfunctionally unhappy either. I try to create my life, consciously and conscientiously. I want it to be meaningful, purposeful. Good, which to my mind is not the same as happy. Fulfilling. You know?

Right now, I have a project on the go that’s, ironically, meaningful and purposeful, and overall critical to the creation of my meaningful and purposeful life, but which has me doing things that are making me dysfunctionally unhappy.

So I’m looking at those things and trying to figure out… do I need to do them? If I do—if they are indeed unavoidable—can I do them differently?

It’s an interesting exercise. I’m trying different things. They all have few things in common: or maybe, just one thing.

They are a quest for… stillness. Silence.

My texting rule—I break it for you, I broke it this morning—is part of it.

My project requires me to be online, plugged in, sharing, responding, six out of seven days at least—and that seventh day, even then there are things…

It has, so far, been a 40-day long experiment in what happens to a creative person when they are never truly alone for 40 days.

It’s fascinating… and it ain’t pretty.

VII.

After his nap, Ender wants to play with his friends and go sledding, and I, the worst mother in the world, don’t let him. But I bundle him into a snowsuit—myself too—and we go for a slow loop around the Common. He barely makes it, all the while insisting he wants to go sledding and to play with his friends.

Back home, I make him tea with honey, but he’s asleep again when I bring it back.

The day continues like this—Ender waking up, falling asleep, whining, the elder two gaming, reading, fighting, me remembering at some point that I should feed them—finding out they’d already fed themselves (“But can you ask Dziadzia to bring buns and milk when he comes?”).

My dad arrives in the evening—with milk and buns, and also chicken wings—to take Flora to her martial arts class. I leave Cinder in charge of the not-puking-but-clearly-not-well Ender—then my mom comes to pick me up, and we go to the premiere of Sean’s film project (which, btw, you can now view at Art Enabled Life).

When we come back, Ender is asleep.

Turns out, Cinder took him sledding.

“Seriously?” That’s me.

“What?” That’s Cinder. “I made him wear a helmet.”

Ender sleeps like the dead; wakes up perfectly healthy.

VIII.

I want to finish writing this post in the evening, in my space. I think that will be the perfect closure to this day and this story: me, in my space, mostly uninterrupted. It was going to go like this, I had it all written in my head, scripted perfectly, and it was going to go like this:

“I have this… affirmation, I guess? words, ugh… that I’m working with right now. Well, there are two—the one I need to work on more I’m not ready to share with you. This one, though, you can hear:

“My days flow with a rhythm that nourishes and inspires myself and others.”

I’m chasing… not happiness. But flow.

Rhythm.

And I think… my rhythm will never be really smooth. Or uninterrupted. Sometimes, I will get planned or unexpected hours that flow gently, naturally into one another. But most of the time—I don’t expect, I can’t expect it.

Someone will puke. The furnace will break down. You will need me. My eyes will be wet.

I can’t control for any of that, and trying to paves the way to dysfunctional unhappiness.

But there are other… interruptions—and ways of being and thinking and acting that nurture interruptions—which all pave the way to dysfunctional unhappiness—that I can control.

So that’s my next project. Adjacent to the ongoing one, and my other creative and professional work.

I’ll tell you about it, bit by bit.

Now I have to go meditate. Then let my mind wander. Have some fabulous sex.

Sleep.”

But, um… instead, after the film, I come home to was-asleep-but-is-now-awake Ender and sit with him for near an hour until he falls back asleep, and then, I want to sleep, not write, myself. So, I do. And the next day, I’m up at 6:17 am doing all the things, and getting picked up before 8 am by a friend and going to an all-day workshop and…

I finish the post there, in-between presentations, pitches, meet-ups.

Rhythm?

Flow?

Sort of.

Rhythm, interrupted?

Sure. Hey, there’s my title.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS A shameless plug for Sean’s amazing work again—Check out the ART ENABLED LIFE project, either via its website, or if you’re a Facebook user, on its Facebook Page. The eleven films featuring eleven artists in dialogue with middle school students about how art builds resiliency (and other beautiful insights) are also live on Youtube now, and they will change your life.