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Rest and Striving
Gestating a baby takes most of my energy but not much of my time
“It’s not unreasonable,” Robert asserts, almost admonishing, “for you to only have the mental energy to do work a couple of hours a day.” He gestures vaguely at my belly. “You’re doing a lot.”
He keeps telling me to rest, and he’s not the only one. But I feel like I barely do anything else. I’m living a life of privilege and ease, and I’m very conscious of it.
I’m working on a novel (the first fifty pages are submitted, fingers crossed), but I haven’t had a job that felt like a “real” job in more than a year: my art internship last summer was a paid pleasure I felt like I stumbled into. The Masters degree was plenty of work, but it’s different when you pay to do it.
And now I’m pregnant, and I’m uncomfortable calling that my main thing. Even though, as Robert (again) points out, it’s not a bad choice for life-changing priority. But even if I accepted it as priority, what would I actually do with my time?
It’s funny to write this, when a year ago I had so much to say on the desire and challenge of slowing down.
I left my faster-paced life with great intentionality. In the spring of 2023, I finished my full-time fellowship, took the summer off from my weekends-and-evenings graduate…
