Hey, all.
I appreciate all the support even as I’ve slowed down my output on here. School and work have taken over my life until the end of the year, but I do have some pieces planned in 2023 that I’ll get up over the next few weeks.
Excited for this one. It’s a guest post from my friend
who runs a super dope publications called that highlights creativity among parents — something that resonates deeply with me.I enjoyed this post a lot. Like me, Matthew also has two little kiddos and tons of ambition to keep doing cool shit, but it serves as a good reminder.
Hope you enjoy it, and if you do, go give ParentSounds a read and reach out to him — he’s the coolest person I know in Germany (I don’t know many others, but seriously, he’s cool).
Bryce
Slow down
I was having a great summer.
Fresh off three months of parental leave, I’d made a decision earlier in the spring to start my own creative agency. Everything was looking up. I’d finished a website and secured my first client. Several other projects, including my shiny new Substack newsletter, were starting to take off.
Our family had returned home at the end of March after traveling across several warmer places to escape most of the Northern European winter. We seemed to be settling into our two-kid life. Our daughter, on the precipice of turning 3, had just “graduated” to the day care group for older kids and the Terrible Twos appeared to be subsiding. At 8 months, our son was maturing into his babyhood.
Berlin’s summer beckoned with all that it has to offer. I was going out a lot, meeting friends, filling my free time with team sports and my first paid gigs as a DJ. Blessed with one grandparent that lives on the other side of Germany and another that visits regularly from the States, my partner and I were even getting to go out for date nights and other non-kid time together at a frequency that most new parent couples (including ourselves, at various other points since we became parents) say they long for. On the Summer Solstice, which fell in the middle of the week this year, Berlin celebrated Fête de la Musique and we got to go to the club. On a Wednesday! On the dance floor that night, it felt like things could only get better.
I know what you’re thinking: who is this guy and what is he about to complain about? His #parentlife sounds pretty ideal.
There was just one problem (which turned out to be the gateway to many other problems).
I wasn’t sleeping.
Sleep is kinda important I should do it more
Sleep deprivation is such a common state of existence for most young parents that it’s easy sometimes to forget how much it messes with your brain.
After 3 years of parenting, I’m a big believer that for all of the nice things about the early years of having kids (there are many), there are certain things in your life that are going to suck for a little while and you kind of have to just deal with it.
Trying not to be a dick to everyone around you as you juggle an unprecedented volume and complexity of overlapping responsibilities, all while operating on chronically low/disrupted sleep… this would definitely fall into that category.
The thing is, you’re not supposed to also do it to yourself.
So when my body essentially broke down and I was sidelined with strep throat for almost two weeks in early July, I had to acknowledge that maybe the level of activity I’d been trying to sustain at the beginning of the summer was a little bit too much.
And when my partner and I had a big fight just over a month later, fueled largely by accumulated stress, slights, and miscommunications, I had to accept something I’ve never really accepted before.
I was completely burned out. A summer of too much going on – too many projects, too many social plans, too many things over and above my core responsibilities as a parent and partner – had taken its toll. I felt like I was handling my kid duties but my relationship was definitely suffering and I wasn’t really doing anything else as well as I expected myself to.
As someone who has been balancing a lot of extracurricular activities pretty much continuously since my teenage years, it was the clearest signal I’ve ever gotten that I needed to slow the f down.
But in order to make any progress, I had to reflect first on what was making me put myself in this position in the first place.
Do what you love but also chill out sometimes
I am the founder of a newsletter dedicated to encouraging parents to continue developing our own hopes and dreams – even as our identities become increasingly wrapped up in the person we are trying to be for our kids.
I’ve heard over and over again from the parents I’ve spoken to for ParentSounds that feeling personally fulfilled is an important part of them being able to give the best version of themselves to parenting. I truly believe that making that space for ourselves as parents is fundamental to helping us all to live happier lives (or maybe just stay sane) during these hectic years.
But I also learned this summer that this kind of thinking has its limits. On a personal level, I realized that too much of my own self worth was coming from how many cool things I could challenge myself to do at the same time, on short rest, while going through one of the most intense times of my life.
This post isn’t intended to be some kind of burnout manual. I’m still working through a lot of the practical and emotional challenges I’ve described here, figuring out how to balance my personal need to stay busy with the importance of taking it easy sometimes. I can’t tell other young parents what to do about pushing/not pushing yourself too hard, because I honestly don’t really know myself.
But what I can say is this: society piles a lot of pressure on us to want to achieve more, do more, be more. And for me at least, my feelings of stress and anxiety usually kick in when I feel like I’m not living up to those expectations.
So whether you’re a parent, planning to be a parent, or just someone trying your best to live a decent life amidst all the chaos and craziness around us in the world, please join me in recognizing these kinds of expectations for what they are. Stay busy if it’s what you like to do, have hobbies if it’s important to you, but don’t do too much of either of those things just because you feel like you have to keep up with everyone else.
Keep doing what you love: but not to the point that it makes you crazy.
Part of dealing with the first burnout I’ve ever acknowledged has been recognizing and coming to terms with the unfair pressures I am putting on myself. The road ahead will be long, but it has to start somewhere. And if I want to be able to help my own kids navigate similar pressures when they hit their teenage years and beyond, it will help if I have some experience taking the same advice I will inevitably give them.
What’s your burnout trigger? Let’s take over Bryce’s comments section and talk about it.
Also, go get some sleep.
About
Matthew Buccelli writes and edits ParentSounds, a newsletter dedicated to helping parents discover, support, and get inspired by other parents pursuing creative passions amidst the day-to-day rollercoaster that is family life.
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