.SOMETIMES RAW.

Doing nothing. Sounds great, no? Or does it give you a nervous eye twitch? Here is something I tried: for one day out of each week (usually Saturday or Sunday), I do absolutely nothing. This doesn’t mean I don’t go anywhere, or just sit on my couch and stare at the wall. It simply means that I clear my calendar and make space for what could happen. I remove any social obligations, let projects sit idle, turn off notifications, and take this day to just be.

Since I am back at work full-time, studying, researching, writing part-time, and being a single mom it is salient to do nothing from time to time. With all this going on in my life, I notice that I am more content when I spend one day doing nothing if I can help it. Just without having a million places to be. No agenda, no rushing around, no one else to please. Just me. Doing whatever I feel like doing, or getting into whatever adventure may come my way. Whatever my priorities are. And, if I want to see where someone’s priorities really lie, I have to look at two things: their calendar and their bank statement.

When I am really stressed, I look at my calendar and take an inventory on how much time I spend doing things. How much of it is work-related? How much is spend on/in social engagements? With family? Writing? Friends? Hobbies? Self-improvement?

Everybody is stressed out at some point. I think we have become a culture that is severely uncomfortable with “free-time” and doing nothing. Many don’t like being left alone with themselves, and that is because it is not “fun”. Some are terrified of silence, of nothing on the agenda, of not being important because who are we without these things to hold us? To give us significance? Others pack their schedules full, hoping that will keep them from stopping long enough to notice their inner lives are in great need of attention. The essence of simplifying life is recognizing the intrinsic value we have by simply being.

A while ago, I realized I have to face my true feelings, my negative emotions, my relational drama, and figure out what to do with it all. It is of course much simpler to turn the TV on, constantly check the phone, and continue numbing.

You know why I write about all this? Because I matter, my life matters, and I have worth. Period. I matter without the stuff, without the outside approval and conferred significance, without the career, the projects, the friends, without anything. So do you! Just. You.

I believe that it takes the absence of an agenda to really get to know yourself. Or Covid-19. It takes quiet. It takes room. It takes time. But keep in mind that everything in the world is going to fight you for it.

“Do-nothing” day:

• I don’t stress about it. I wake up, and simply resist the urge to immediately DO. It took me some time to break this habit, but as soon as I removed all of my go-to distractions, I instantly noticed how often I rely on them.
• I pay more attention. Depriving myself of my normal comforts for even a short amount of time can go a long way in teaching me what I really need. I am able to notice when I have an urge to check my phone or make a call and get a better feel for my own patterns of behavior and the motivation behind it.
• I listen to my heart. Is Party X something I would typically just say yes to because I feel obligated? Or is this something that would really breathe life into me? If the answer is no, I won’t go. Easy.
• I spend time in silence. You know why? My brain is constantly bombarded with information, images, and noise but the mind is not a fortress where stimulation can constantly bounce off.

It’s easy to get over-stimulated in daily life by all of the noise. I absolutely need my quiet time after my son goes to bed. The silence and to do nothing is absolutely essential for me to regain momentum for the next day.

Any expert will tell you, the best thing a mom can do to be a better mom is to carve out a little time for herself. Here are some great “me time” activities that work(ed) for me.

• Go to the bathroom. A lot. Take your phone.
• Offer to do the dishes or to empty the dishwasher.
• Take out the garbage and bring tschicks (cigarettes) and your phone.
• Take ninety-minute showers. If you only shower every three or four days, it will be easier to get away with it.
• Say you are going to look for something (e.g. the diapers), then go into your child’s room and just stand there until your partner comes in and asks, “What are you doing?”
• Stand over the sink and eat the rest of your child’s dinner while he or she pulls at your pant leg asking for it back.
• Try to establish that you are the only one in your family who is allowed to go to the post office.
• Sleep whenever your child sleeps. Everyone knows this one, but I suggest WHY stop there? Scream when your baby screams. Walk around pantless when your baby walks around pantless.
• Read! When your baby is finally down for the night, pick up a good book, for example, Understanding Sleep Disorder: A study on Narcolepsy and Apnea. Taking some time to read each night really taught me how to feign narcolepsy when my son now asks me when we can go to an indoor playground again.
• Pray that whenever crystal meth is offered, I hope my child will remember me and how I cut his grapes in half and stick with beer or red wine. Or a soda. May he always be protected and may I make it out alive through his puberty.

Just implementing for or five of these little techniques will prove restorative and give you the energy you need to not drink until midnight. I promise.

Wait, I am not done yet. The reason I wrote this is, that a good friend of mine is pregnant and very scared. She should be. Being a parent can be freaking horrible sometimes. Then the conversation came up if I want another child.

Initial silence.

I have one top-notch son with whom I am in love. It is a head-over-heels “first love” kind of thing, because I pay for everything and all we do is hold hands. When he says, “I wish I had a baby brother or sister,” I am stricken with guilt and panic for one second. When he says, “Mom, I want more Lego,” or “I will eat chocolate only from now on!” or “Mom, wipe my butt!” I am less affected.

I thought that raising an only child would be the norm in a big city, but my son is the only child in his class without a sibling. Most kids have at least two. Large families have become a status symbol in Vienna, Austria. For some, four beautiful children named after kings, Greek gods, and pieces of fruit are a way of saying “I can afford a four-bedroom penthouse and pay EU 500,000 in elementary school tuition fees each year. How you living’?”

So, this woman who asked me if I want another child runs a local toy store that sells the kind of beautiful wooden educational toys that kids love. “You want more kids? I have four and it is soooooo awesome!” “Why would I want more kids when I could be here with you having an awkward conversation over a tray of old danishes while my son plays independently with these toys?” “You should have another one. I had my children at thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty-one, and forty-two. It is fine.” Didn’t she see my son playing with a pack of matches in the back of her store? Where did he get those from? And didn’t she see me starting to uncomfortably walk out of the store while trying to leave my son behind (plus matches)?

Long story short: I am getting bits and pieces of my “old” life back. Pieces such as free time from parenting. Things change constantly and he will go through different stages that he and I have to adapt to. My son will be seven this year. There was never a time when I debated the second-baby issue. Not even when I cannot sleep. To hell with everybody who tries to tell me that one child is “no-child”. One child means a huge amount of work and to better be great at time management. Or, maybe I will just wait until I am fifty and give birth to a volleyball. “Merry Christmas from Daniela, Joel, and Wilson,” the card I send to the helicopter moms will say. “Happy Holidays” on the ones I send to my family.

It is okay. I will see myself out.

My birthday is around the corner. I am approaching 39 which means the big 4-0 is just around the corner, too. This also means, that I am no spring chicken but I am not an old lady either. I can party like a twenty-year-old but it then takes me a couple of days to recover. Sometimes I am a tired mother taking my son to the park, and other times I am a petulant teenager giving the finger to Frank the FedEx guy who didn’t bring me that package I ordered ten weeks ago. I idle right in the middle without knowing when middle age actually starts. According to the dictionary, middle-age is “the period of life between young adulthood and old age, now usually regarded as between about forty-five and sixty.” SIXTY? Nice try, Oxford.

I personally think middle age begins once you start looking forward to eating dinner before 6.30 p.m., or when you call the cops when your next-door neighbor has a party. I know my body feels older even though I feel I am in shape and practice Yoga on a daily basis. Sometimes certain parts hurt that usually didn’t. However, I would never let this social pressure of “staying young forever” get to me.

I can either exhaust myself thrashing against it or turn around and let the pressure of it massage out my kinks. Fighting aging is like the War on Drugs. It’s expensive, does more harm than good, and has proven to never end.

Hopefully, I have another fifty years of healthy living ahead of me before I pass from this earth either in my sleep (preferred) or during a daring rescue caught on tape the paramedics recorded. Ideally, my penultimate day would be spent attending a giant beach party thrown in my honor. Everyone would gather around me at sunset, and the golden light would make everything look awesome as I told hilarious stories and gave away my book collection to my friends. I and all my still-alive friends (which, let’s face it, will mostly be women) would sing and dance late into the night. My son would be strong, grown, handsome, and happy. I would be frail but adorable. Once the party ended, everyone would fall asleep except for me, my son, and my partner. We would spend the rest of the night watching the stars under a nice blanket my granddaughter made.

As the sun began to rise, my partner would wake and put the coffee on. My son would still be asleep. My partner’s last words would be something banal and beautiful. “Are you warm enough, my love? I want to tell you a story.” he would ask and say while handing me another blanket. “Just right, okay, tell me a story,” I would answer while feeling content.

My funeral would be incredibly intimate. I would instruct people to throw firecrackers and play Pink Floyd songs on a loop.

Did I freak you out? It wasn’t until I turned thirty-two and my son was born that I started to feel like my adult life was beginning. This was around the time when I knew how to jump-start my own car battery. I had spent so much of my twenties in a state of delayed adolescence and so much of my teenage years wishing that time would move faster. At thirty, I felt like I had about six or seven years of feeling like a real adult before my brain, and society tried starting to make me worry about being old. There is the built-in baby stuff, plus the added fascination with the new. But here is the thing. Getting older is awesome, and not because I don’t care as much about what people think. It’s awesome because I develop a secret superpower. My son would love to read all about it.

The superpower: Getting older makes me somewhat different or being able to adapt to things more easily. This can be exciting. Now that I am better at observing a situation, I can use my sharpened skills to scan a room and navigate it before anyone even notices that I am there. This can lead to me finding a comfortable couch at a party, or to the realization that I am at a terrible party and need to leave immediately. I can witness young people embarrassing themselves and get a thrill that it is not me. I can watch and listen to them throw around their “alwayses” and “nevers” and “I am the kind of person who would never….” and delight in the fact that I am past that point in my life. Feeling different means I can float.

Getting older also helps me develop an x-ray vision. I am now able to see through people more. I get better at understanding what people mean and how it can be different from what they say. Finally, the phrase “actions speak louder than words” starts to make sense. I can read people’s energies better, and this means I get stuck less talking to idiots. Gone are the days when I take things personally and internalize everyone’s behavior. I get better at knowing what I want and need.

Lastly, because I am a superhero, I am really good at putting together a good team. I can look around the room and notice the other superhero because they are the ones noticing me. Some friends I meet are highly emulsified and full of awesomeness. Now that I have a sense of who I am, I know better what kind of friend(s) or partner(s) I want and need. I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I am tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and I am more about all the deliciousness instead.

Hey…. Can you walk and breathe? Yes!? Then stop complaining.