I Don’t Know How I Do It Either

“I don’t know how you do it!” It’s a common phrase said to people who seem to be successfully managing life. I was shocked recently when a person said it to me. Shocked because I don’t for a moment feel like I’m successfully managing life. However, it wasn’t the first time someone has said something similar to me. I’ve been called a superhero or a supermom, even though I am far from being a Pinterest or Instagram mom who usually earns those labels. Recently I was accused of bragging about my life by another mom. It broke my heart because I am just another struggling mom like every other mom truly is.

Social media has put a filter on the real home life returning us in many ways to a time in history where women especially have to portray the perfect life. No one wants to put a picture on Insta of their messy-but-true living room. So we wait until it’s perfectly tidy for a moment and hurry to snap the picture before another toy box gets dumped. When I became a mother, I became very critical of the performance of perfect motherhood and the pressure that it places on the rest of us. I wanted true, real-to-life mothers. I would cringe when called supermom because it just wasn’t me. I don’t want to be labeled “super” at anything because I don’t feel super at anything. The mom who accused me of bragging broke my heart because what I wanted to tell her is I have nothing to brag about. I am constantly failing at everything I do. Or at least I feel like I am. (This seems like a common theme of modern motherhood and possibly modern womanhood but that is an essay I hope to be writing at a later date.)

Let’s go back to that “I don’t know how you do it!” phrase. I want to examine it, break it down to the truth with my life as an example. The person who said it to me went on to mention she didn’t know how I juggled school, writing, and being a mother. Juggling is a good phrase for this. All of us in our lives have balls of various weights in the air. Some are slippery, some have a good grip, some rise and fall in a perfect arc, others take off like a golden snitch and are hard to catch again.

The balls I juggle include writing, school, and parenting, yes, but also wifing, managing a home and the care of plants and our cats, social obligations, and managing my mental health. So how do I do it? Let’s break this question down into three key components: the “it,” the “do,” and the “how.”

What is “it” in the context of the question? “It” is usually something put on a pedestal, the seemingly unattainable image of successful life juggling. It is always a performance, a veneer, a public image. No one is doing “it” alone. No one is doing “it” without practice, without failure, without bad days. No one is not struggling, as much as Instagram would have us believe otherwise. “It” is a sham. Women are asked the question of how they do “it” all the time. How do we be both mothers and human beings with jobs/lives? Celebrities doing “it” always have two things: money and hired help. They are constantly asked about doing “it” but also constantly erase those factors that allow them to do it. Which is why no on has a clear answer to how they “do it.”

Men are rarely asked this. Men don’t do “it” because they do their jobs. They are considered to have less to juggle. “It” is the territory of women. We are met with surprise that we can do what we’ve been doing forever: juggling so many balls while men just usually have two.

So what do I “do”? What does my real life look like? Why does my own real life not match the “it”? Well to answer what my real life looks like, you need to know one thing: I actually have two lives. I’m a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde just without the doctoring or the Victorian murdering (was Hyde a murderer?). My life on any given day looks like a lot of planning and organizing (more on that later), sending and answering texts and emails, thinking while often scrolling through social media, attending to my son’s needs but not scheduling him into a complex routine, not playing with him as much as I should, allowing him to watch way more screen time than is recommended, eating, and sleeping a lot. On a good day, a Jekyll day, the day will also include some successful juggling: I might write or read, do some art, get out of the apartment to go for a walk or errand, get some chores or household projects done, read up on documents related to my son’s life, etcetera. But then Hyde comes—my depression—and all of the balls I am juggling fall. Splat. I go back to the bare minimum and wait it out until I’m feeling up to picking up the balls again and getting that rhythm going. I don’t write every day. I don’t play with my kid every day even though I’m with him all day most days. I rarely read anything other than social media. I spend too much time staring blankly at screens. I don’t exercise. I try and fail to eat right. I miss classes and am way behind on my assignments. My apartment is usually a mess. I only post the pictures of the veneer, the sheen, the “it” and I have fallen into the trap of being performative. I need to stop doing “it” and be real.

But “how?” How do I juggle at all? There are three advantages I have that make the “how” easier: my privilege, my husband, and my extreme personal organization methods.

I have paid help: a person who cleans for me weekly and another person who maintains my garden. We don’t have a nanny or daycare, but my son is enrolled in preschool and he has good therapists funded by the government for his autism. I have the privilege of a nice condo in a beautiful city and a husband who makes enough money so that we live comfortably without me having to bring in an income. I am privileged not only financially but also as a white, cishet woman. That goes a long way in easing the stress so that I can juggle. And I don’t have “clean” and “garden” as balls to juggle.

My husband is amazing. He is in charge of putting dinner on the table (literally), keeping the kitchen clean and he does the night shift with our son meaning getting him to sleep most nights and getting up in the night with him all while also working a full 5 days a week job schedule. He also supports my writing and believes in me as a writer. He will look after our son so I can write any time he’s not working. We are to celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary this summer. We are happy. We have balance in our marriage. I am grateful for him because he’s a large part of how I can appear to be doing it.

The final secret to my success is my terrifyingly elaborate organization system. My depression comes in waves. It enters my life, takes over, and recedes, leaving me shivering and wondering “where was I?” In order to create continuity in my life, I need to be organized. I always have. Over the years my systems have become increasingly elaborate. I was bullet journaling (creating my own day planner from blank notebooks) nearly 20 years ago. I eventually went digital, starting with Reminders, then Wunderlist, then Todoist, then Trello, then Airtable, then upgrading to Airtable pro, and now recently I’ve moved to Notion and am madly in love. This program may be it, may be the program I finally settle in on. My organization is my secret. I spend a lot of time on it but it keeps me sane. I’m lucky enough to thrive on organization, clarity, tidiness, and most of all I enjoy the process of achieving them. I am just one of those people who likes to have a plan and a tidy workspace. It does not make me superior. In fact, if you took away the scaffolding of my life that is my organization systems, I would not only not be able to do “it” I would simply be unable to “do.” I am organized as a coping mechanism for my depression. I am organized because that’s how I survive. It is my way of reaching the playing field.

I am very open about my messy internal life. I embrace that vulnerability because truth and openness are important to me. Because organization is important to me, I am less open about the many times of the day I fail at it. I don’t care too much about my own physical appearance beyond my clothing and body shape (okay make-up, I just don’t care about make-up) but I do care about the appearance of my home for reasons I don’t fully understand. And I suppose I care about the appearance of my life. But appearances are just that. They are not reality. I need to work, going forward, on showing the realities of my outward life more. Am I ashamed that my place is usually dirty and a mess, that the TV is usually on in my household, that I’m actually really behind on everything? Yes. I feel like I’m failing at it all too. Is all this mess and failure real? Yes. I need to be more honest. I don’t know how I do it either because I’m not doing it. No one is.