#78: how many times can you do the thing you love?

on the realities of parent-artist-freelancer life and how it all patches together

Hard to believe it has been 1 year since I started writing about writing and perhaps more importantly, since I moved writing from the margins of my life to the center. This year, I want to focus the monthly writer’s note on things I want to remind myself when I next feel lost. I hope you find it helpful, too.

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Good morning,

I am writing to you from the sunny corner of a local lunch spot that’s attached to my local grocery store. It’s my first time here alone, after a packed morning of work calls and a long, hot shower. I’m here because I needed a lunch break and I also have to get groceries. Eating here by myself, enjoying a slow meal makes me feel like I’m cheating on my son. It’s a luxury and a grievance all at once.

This feeling, the guilt of being away from your child to do something that’s good for you, even the lowest hanging self-care fruit, like lunch break during a work day, is something inexplicable. I’ve been examining it for a while.

Beneath it lie assumptions about work and value that are cemented into my being, no matter how feminist a tide is turning in my social circles about care work. Here are some of them.

Cultural Beliefs about Work, Value and Care that Produce Guilt

1. Art/writing/creative work is leisure and gluttony, not work, unless it makes you money; in which case it is work.

2. The value of your time is measurable on an hourly basis; therefore, an hour spent not working is that much value (money) lost.

3. Choosing to pay for childcare should be a necessity, not a choice: for example, if you don’t have to work because your partner is able to pay for most of the bills, you should be with your child, rather than investing in yourself. And if you are primary caregiver of this sort, you should be able to do it alone, because your mom/aunt/grandma/etc. did it alone with even more children back in her time.

4. It’s possible to do it “all” without burning out—i.e., caring for children, yourself, your home, your community and also making money and doing art.

There are many more, but these are the big four, for me.

The Mental Load of Freelancer/Artist

Now, add to this the mental load of being an artist and freelancer—even if you don’t have kids.

In addition to the actual work you have to deliver, be it writing, research, consulting projects, art pieces, shows, or whatever it is you create, being a freelancer requires the mental load of:

1. Managing your time entirely on your own.

2. Setting rates and negotiating contracts that can cover your expenses and taxes on a very frequent basis.

3. Navigating the realities of working alone, or finding the right colleagues, officemates and environment to help you actually get productive work done, which requires both time and financial investment.

4. Having no unpaid leave, be it for children, sickness, holidays or life’s challenges.

5. Lack of continuity: Having to juggle wildly different clients, projects, work environments and contract structures, which makes work days feel unpredictable—and weeks feel unproductive, even if you were incredibly productive.

6. Protecting time and energy to do your art, which, if unpaid, you are subsidizing through freelance work.

7. Battling the demons that come with creative work, while fielding an internet full of advice on the way you “should” be working at your craft—read: every day, like a machine, stoic, ballsy, deadly serious.

The Realities of Being a Primary Caregiver in the Early Childhood Years

Now, let’s add parenthood.

If you are a primary childcare provider (i.e.: in a partnership where basic financial needs are met by another person so you can take full responsibility for the child during workdays) navigating how to work, how much to work, and if/how art can continue to exist in your life is hard.

What’s been most helpful for me is finding other people to talk to about this, because I had almost no examples in my life of mothers who chose to be with their kids in the early childhood years, but also did freelance or art work.

Fortunately for me, a few brilliant folks in San Francisco started a community called Mothers in Art and Design SF, and our book club conversations, coupled with those with longtime freelancer friends, have helped me figure out what I need to do. I hope these insights will be helpful to you as well.

The Dilemma between Art + Children

In The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity (which we read last year), in a chapter about ambition, Catherine Ricketts writes, on children:

Having a child is perhaps the most ambitious thing a person can do. Motherhood is so ordinary that we have trouble seeing all that is extraordinary about it. It is, as the design critic Alexandra Lange says, “obscured by its own ubiquity”—too normal for us to notice. But to birth from our flesh a human person, body and sacred soul—that’s ambitious. To be tasked with stewarding that body and soul, to foster not only our children’s survival but the development of virtue and the cultivation of talent so that they might be a blessing to the world—that’s damn ambitious. When I pause to reflect on the magnitude of the role, I wonder how it can coexist with the ambition that animates professional artists.

And on art:

My drive is both personal and political. I want the credentials to get a job that is meaningful and flexible, and that affords my children a safe and enriching childhood. This is my small dream. And my big dream? I understand now more than ever why our society is shaped by men, for men. It is extremely difficult to bear the biological and social burden of motherhood and rise to professional prominence. Today, many households depend on two working parents, so there are more women in the workforce than there used to be. Still, many of us temper our professional ambitions when we have children, taking instead, if we can, the path of least resistance. When we do this, we withdraw our unique vision from the institutions that shape our world. I want to live in a world humanized by maternal vision. This motivates me.

And on the tension between the two:

Ambition, though, comes at a cost… Sometimes, when a project is underway, even the demands of parenting can’t slow us down… Part of me cheers on these parents who find time for art in the margins. But another part of me wonders: What are we missing with our backs turned to face our work? Might ambition for our art eclipse our wonderment over our children’s lives?

She ultimately points to beautiful examples of mother-artists who have been able to blend the two, especially by centering their work in or on the home. It’s worth a read.

a page from Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape (Asawa was an SF-based artist who blended motherhood, art and community seamlessly and is discussed at length in The Mother Artist)

Replacing Old Beliefs With New Ones

Amidst these tensions and ambitions, I’ve landed on a few lessons that I am trying hard to engrave in my life in place of the beliefs (above) that I’m letting go of.

1. Old Belief: Art/writing/creative work is leisure and gluttony, not work, unless it makes you money; in which case it is work
   New Belief: Art, especially as a parent, is a contribution to a value system, a work ethic and a sense of self that can be awe-inspiring to children and deeply meaningful to your community, maybe even to the world.

2. Old Belief: The value of your time is measurable on an hourly basis; therefore, an hour spent not working is that much value (money) lost.
   New Belief: Time is not money. Time expands and contracts according to what is happening within it. An hour that nourishes you to show up for all parts of your life well, is more valuable than your rate.

3. Old Belief: You shouldn’t pay for childcare unless it’s absolutely (financially) necessary, and if you can stay home, you should do it on your own because your elders did.
   New Belief: Children need to see fulfilled parents. If your fulfillment comes from something other than your children, pursuing it with wisdom is the right choice.

4. Old Belief: It’s possible to do it “all” (care for children, self, home, community, make money and do art) without burning out.
   New Belief: Tradeoffs and prioritization are necessary and should be re-evaluated seasonally in order to protect your health and effectiveness in each of your roles.

What can I do this year?

All this said, here is the framing I am trying out this year, when it comes to prioritizing my own plate.

I find that the trickiest part of balancing motherhood and art is this: my primary responsibility is my child, yet I need income to pay for childcare if I want to invest in my writing. If I take on too much freelance work, I lose time and energy for writing. It’s a delicate balance.

So the prompt I gave myself for 2025 was: How many times can you do something important to you this year? Not everyday, not perfectly, but at all. I’ve accordingly decided on a few things that are important to me that I want to do 100 times each. It doesn’t matter when, how, or for how long. I just want to show up for these parts of my life 100 times.

• Manuscript - I’m 8 chapters into a manuscript that I hope to publish next year. I have many, many words to go. I’m going to put in 100 writing sessions this year. So far, I’ve done 5.

• Newsletter - I write these letters off and on, mostly when inspired. I’ve thought about increasing my publishing schedule as writers are told they should to “build audience.” I’m going to put in 100 writing sessions on this as well and see where that gets us.

• Freelance Work - I have part-time childcare so I’ve started taking on projects again and as much as I love being primary parent, I also love working. So I’m going to block 100 sessions for freelance work this year (likely more but it’s an easy way for me to calculate childcare needs and also protect writing time).

• Deep Admin - There are so many things you have to do in adulthood to stay financially, physically and relationally healthy. Rather than allowing these things to take over the margins of my week as they often do, I’m dedicating 50 sessions to the dirty work this year—sorting out paperwork, planning for the future, researching and booking care, travel, etc. I feel best when I’m ahead of the curve on this one and so I’m just going to plug sessions in when I can, capping at 50, to get us in solid administrative shape this year.

• Driving - While licensed and arguably a great driver, I have a lifelong fear of driving that I’m tired of. Having mostly lived in cities with great public transport, I’ve managed to avoid challenging this fear for decades. But I’m going in. I’m going to drive 100 times this year. So far, I’ve done it three times and it’s already feeling better.

And then there is self-care, the part of life that everyone tells you needs to be a set of “habits” but habits and routines are impossible in early parenthood. So instead, I’m going to work out, chant and read (my three favorite decompression activities) 100x this year, each, no matter how short the session. So far I’ve enjoyed 9 good chanting sessions and 0 workouts and 0 reading (because social media took over my life this month). Let’s go!

A Little Structure, No Rigid Rules

I had a chat with ChatGPT about how to approach this given my current childcare hours and baby’s nap schedule and it helped me categorize these goals into high- vs medium-level energy drain, suggesting I use childcare hours for tougher, more draining things, and naps for short sprints just to keep me going toward 100.

For example, go to a workout class when you have childcare, do a 10-minute video when it’s a nap. Or, do a batch of harder life admin tasks when you have care, reply to quick emails during a nap. Or, do a 3-hour writing session when you have care, edit the newsletter you’ve already written during a nap.

This was immensely helpful because I’m awful at managing my energy proactively and often suffer from already being drained by the time I show up at my desk with too many things to do and no way to prioritize.

So I took the AI’s good advice, put everything into a tracker app that is *not* streak-based (i.e.: you only make progress if you’re doing thing x daily). The tools you use matter. They send you messages about your success just based on how they are set up.

For me, there are no such things as habits in this season of life. No guarantees of showing up at the same time every week to the same place. That’s part of the choice I made a long time ago when I knew that 9-5 life wasn’t for me. And it’s a choice I am making again in motherhood, especially as my own boss.

Still, I need to feel a sense of momentum to stay motivated. So I’m offering myself a menu of options for two situations: 1) When I have childcare and 2) When baby naps.

Childcare options:

1. Book writing session

2. Newsletter writing session

3. Freelance work session/calls

4. Deep admin block

5. Drive somewhere alone!

Naptime options:

1. Short workout at home

2. Read a chapter of a book

3. Chant for 15-30 minutes

It’s a gentle reminder to myself that I can fit dinner and laundry into the margins of the day but my protected pockets of time are for me to get closer to my own fulfillment, so I can be a great mom.

Your turn! Do you have something you would like to do 100 times this year? When will you offer yourself the option?

Happy Tuesday,

Jihii

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Related Resources:

• The Mother Artist by Catherine Ricketts

• Mothering and Writing Are Both Undervalued Labor, so How Do Women Do Both? (same author)

• The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids-And Come Back Stronger Than Ever (Neha Ruch) - just came out, I wrote about her here

• On setting goals and keeping ourselves accountable (Mothers in Art & Design SF)