Learning to rest on my laurels

With the best year of my working life drawing to a close, I feel humbled by the rewarding work that is behind me. As I wait to see what 2024 has in store, I’m taking the time to feel proud of myself

This week I felt forced to do something ‘unprofessional’. I wrote to the editor of a magazine explaining my inability to meet their deadline. In theory, the print deadline was March. There was, as such, enough time. But I’d had a sleepless night. Our child struggled to settle because of constant coughing. When I’d ‘woken up’, I decided I needed to clear my plate. Post motherhood, I’d already begun limiting the scope of work I could take on because I do have a ‘full-time’ position, even though I work remotely as a freelancer. Having a stable income allowed me to renounce the scarcity mentality that had informed my career. I no longer had to take on anything that paid to mitigate the precariousness of earning a livelihood as a writer. Doing so meant my work rarely feels like a chore and I can approach my assignments with enthusiasm and care. Having an equal partner to boot has meant that I can not only meet deadlines but also get paid on time since he is happy to take care of the hassle of invoicing.

It was not easy for me to acknowledge that I was feeling emotionally and intellectually exhausted. I confessed to the editor that if the deadline was later, I could do the piece but at the moment I didn’t have the bandwidth, especially since we were travelling to India in three days, and I am aware of how ‘present’ I will need to be for our child. It would be in my own interest to maintain a lighter workload. My editor was extremely understanding and forgiving and responded with empathy. I felt suddenly so privileged to be in a position where I could so easily determine what my work-life balance could look like.

One of the hardest aspects of motherhood is not yielding to the complete submission it frequently demands of you. Which is one of the reasons I’ve begun advocating for enhanced paternal leave. I continue to espouse that mothers ought to have the right to paid maternity leave and to have greater autonomy in setting those boundaries, but I have begun to see how phenomenal it is for babies to spend more time with other primary caregivers too. The past few weeks, as our toddler was in severe discomfort because his final lower molars had begun to erupt, I often found he was simply more at peace when he wasn’t around me. When I was in the picture, he was frequently fussy and needy, when my partner took over and took him out, he was totally fine and absorbed by the world. I am gradually beginning to see how holding on to a full-time position over the last 1.5 years has helped me manage my sanity. Because it forces me to make myself somewhat redundant to my child.

If you were to ask me which has been the best year of my working life, I would say 2023 without batting an eyelid. As the year draws to a close, I feel humbled by all the work I have done, perhaps because it is all so quantifiable. As an editor and proofreader, my name has appeared on the colophons of numerous publications, brochures and one wonderful zine, which marks the culmination of a workshop I co-led on art criticism. In addition to my weekly columns for mid-day, I managed my monthly columns for another online publication. I guest lectured at so many locations and was compensated handsomely for all of them. I had to decline a few invitations because the logistics of getting there with a child felt too daunting. I wrote a whole book! I have a manuscript sitting inside a shoebox, all handwritten in Beryl and Turquoise ink with my LAMY. Three publications were also released that had sizeable contributions by me. I earned more this year than ever before in my life. For the first time, living in Europe, I don’t feel like the need to count every cent. I can order off the menu what I want, rather than only what I can afford. Oh yes, and I managed to get my A1 level certification for the bilingual exam in German and Italian, which I do feel is no mean feat considering I have only been home-schooled in both languages.

I’m taking this time to feel proud of myself. One of the hardest things I’ve learned to do is to contextualise my achievements against my abilities and disabilities, not in relation to anyone else. It means I am not competing with anyone. Nothing in my life has felt harder than motherhood. It takes a lot for me to accept and acknowledge this fact. I saw a TikTok disguised as a public service announcement telling mothers of toddlers to learn to be okay with the fact that now is simply not their time to thrive. I held that cautionary message dear as I wrote that email to my editor bailing on my commitment. I don’t know what next year will bring. My only explicit goal is to learn to more fully embrace that parenting mantra of doing less and enjoying more. I want to learn to rest on my laurels.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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