Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Acting as if I am

A funny thing about being a parent is that once you are one, you are one. There's nothing (barring the insane and/or criminal) that you can do to not be a parent. You can, of course, choose to be a completely uninvolved parent, but still, there it is, your progeny roams the planet.

I sort of like that. Although I sometimes dream of the free-wheeling days before I was a parent, I never agonize about whether I want to continue to be one. It frees me up to focus my energy on thinking about what kind of parent I want to be. Not just in terms of being a good or bad parent, but how much do I want to structure our days vs. being flexible, how much I want to rely on existing guidelines vs. following my intuition, how much I want to work vs. be with the kids.

I'm going to try applying some of the same logic to other parts of my life. As many of my friends know, I've been waffling about staying in my job for almost as long as I've been doing the job. And five years is an awfully long time to waffle. So this year, instead of having ongoing conversation in my head about whether I'm going to stay in the job or not, I'm going to accept that I have my job and it just is, just like I am a parent and it just is. That way, I can focus on what kind of colleague/consultant/manager/ leader/salesperson/writer I want to be. Not necessarily easier, but a much more interesting, and more fruitful conversation, I hope.

Likewise, instead of wondering if I am going to go to yoga or not go to yoga, I'm going to try to think about when I'm going to go, and how I can cover off on work and childcare so that I can make it.

Finally, in one more domain, I'm going to try to act as if I am...allergic to cookies. Well, that might be going overboard.

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