Day 14: The Paradox of Undivided Attention

12 /11/21 - Another Palindrome! 

I woke up sans alarm at 6:30 this morning, which seems to show this challenge is DOABLE! My 365 days and 365 hours may yet prove possible, as my body adjusts to the routine of waking up early for writing and, hopefully, adopts it as a habit. 

I have also, on multiple occasions this week, given both my children the care and undivided attention they deserve. I wish I could say I did this daily, easily and without exceptions, but — as a parent with a full-time job — mustering that unhurried, undivided attention for my children becomes challenging.

Sure, my husband and I go through the motions each day. We get them fed, clothed and off to school, help with the homework and after-school activities, pick up and drop off all over the place, put a healthy-enough dinner on the table and most often eat together as a family. We do the laundry and provide a never-ending supply of snacks (just kidding, the snack supply ends when the kids have eaten them all approximately 48 hours after shopping). 

Parents take on so much! We do the dishes and read the stories and check the toothbrushes and perform gentle tuck-ins and give goodnight kisses. All this is a whole, whole lot. 

The stress often grows overwhelming, especially when you include current worries about health and safety, risk mitigation, and the grief and mourning that go along with COVID-19, not to mention the financial difficulty and rising costs causing so much trouble in household budgets right now. 

I hugely respect my students’ families, too, knowing they deal with all these issues and more, including some of which I have zero concept: immigration issues, multiple siblings, special needs, language barriers, insecure housing, variable wages. 

So, given all this, I needed to ask myself whether doing this writing challenge seems selfish. With only 24 hours each day, and most already allotted to work, sleep, family and chores, I wondered if I might put this hour to better use spending more time with my children or doing extra work to support my students and families from school. 

However, after somewhat impulsively jumping into this challenge a few weeks ago, I have realized this practice actually helps me stay more present for my children, my students and their families. 

I call this the paradox of undivided attention. 

It may appear paradoxical, but spending this one hour per day focusing just on myself frees me to focus on others much more fully throughout the rest of my days. 

Over the past two weeks of my challenge, I have enjoyed my work days more and accomplished more than usual with extra energy, innovation and optimism. A few key adjustments contributed to this as well, such as removing my personal email from my work computer and taking a 15-minute outdoor walk to reset myself at lunch.  

Waking up extra early to write and exercise has also facilitated easier mornings. I arrive at work clear-eyed and ready — as opposed to my previous morning routine of scrambling to leave home 20 minutes after waking up, while yelling at my children to eat something, then worrying all day about whether they left the oven on after making toast. 

The past few weeks have featured several mornings so leisurely and drama-free with my children I felt like I was forgetting something!

And, honestly, they don’t even know about my challenge or my blog-writing yet. I have seen no need to tell them because they sleep through most of my writing time. 

Before I publish my blog, I will ask for permission to use their names, their pictures and reference them, and I will ask if they have noticed any difference in my attention in the past two weeks — either positive or negative. 

For now, I notice the difference. I feel like a new person. And I really like her.