#59 Hire a babysitter for writing time; spend four hours feeling weirdabout it.

Ten years ago, in the middle of graduate school, I decided it would be a great idea to also get married and have a baby. I was 25, the age of Jumping Into Everything At Once, and so the task of accomplishing three major life events in one year seemed reasonable.

Children are front and center (and #3 on this list) of how I avoid writing. Writing while parenting is possible, but it is hard, people. One child was enough to keep me busy and distracted from writing for years. How could I dream up fictional worlds with an adorable child dragging me back to reality, demanding fruit snacks, trips to the park, more milk, SpongeBob? Many writers are parents, but years went by before I slowly began to find balance between parenting and writing.

Then I had another baby.

So here I am again, searching for that balance, writing in rushed moments between shaping the fragile ego of a ten-year-old and nurturing an infant in her formative first years. No one person can do all this, of course. So Nathan and I found the perfect babysitter, a kind and capable person, a nurse, a woman with whom we were already acquainted. This very morning, the ten-year-old is at school, learning and engaging in the beginning stages of forming her life without me, and the one-year-old is safe in the hands of an excellent caregiver. I have the next 4 hours--4 hours!--to write.

And here I sit, worrying about my children.

Such is the paradox of parenthood: wanting so badly some free time for yourself, then freaking out about it when it's given to you.

But I persevere. I wrote this blog post, didn't I? Now I only have 3 hours, 12 minutes left to go...