Letting Go

I’ve been a bit busy lately. Lots of freelance work, trying to work out so I can stay in somewhat decent shape and prepare for labor, trying to take care of myself and the baby, yet freaking out about things like money (paying for day care will be like paying for an apartment or two decent car payments a month), or what I’m doing with my life. (Jesus Christ I’m about to become a mother, am I doing the right things? Living the right kind of life? Doing what I “should” be doing?)

I’m thinking about how I (and many people) get bogged down in temporary details. Things that won’t matter to us in a week, much less a year, but they cause stress and heartache and sleepless nights.

I’ll give you an example. I’ve been freaking out about a freelance assignment that I feel pressure to finish. I want to do a good job, but there was a tight deadline and I have been working full time, trying to exercise, trying to take care of myself, yet also simultaneously make more money. Pretty funny, huh? In the meantime, I have let my novel fall by the wayside. So I woke up around 4 a.m. this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was thinking about money (paying for day care, do I need safer car, I need to start looking into some nursery furniture, blahblahblah noise) and then I started freaking out because after my initial rash of queries, I haven’t sent any more out. So I got out of bed and until 7 or so I wrote query letters. I sent some via e-mail and some are in the mail today. That made me feel better.

Then I let other things stress me out. Work, deadlines, expectations (my own and others). And I’m wondering if maybe I’m letting myself already fall into a trap, the trap many mothers fall into. The attempt to be all these things, to do all these things, to do the “right” thing. And really, the whole situation is silly. I just want to take myself a whole lot less seriously.

Most of my worries are bullshit. My car is fine. My baby will be fine. I will find a way to get furniture and all these other things that seem so all-fire important at 4 in the morning. But even if I don’t, you know what? She won’t die if she doesn’t have coordinating baby furniture and neither will I. I have so much, we have so much, and here I am worried about how to get more, more, more. Does the room need to be “perfect” for my daughter to be happy? I doubt it. A for-example worry: How will we finish remodeling the bathroom with all these other expenses? Answer: we don’t have to. There is no need to remodel the bathroom. Just my own expectation. My own list I keep adding two things to as I cross one off.

I’m going to try to let some of these things go. Try to have more humor about things. Try not to feel the need to be “right” all the time. Do these things matter, really? When we won’t even think of them or remember them in a year?

I started thinking about the Office of Good Deeds, their Drop-a-Grudge campaign, and generally speaking, living life a little lighter. Letting go some of this heavy baggage I have taken to carrying. All by myself; no one is expecting it but me. And if other people are expecting it, you know what? Fug it. So not worth the stress over unnecessary things.

So here’s to letting go. Here’s to more humor. Here’s to being the Ambassador of Ping Pong (as the Office of Good Deeds has), or the Emperor of Ice Cream as Katy would like to be, or in my case, giving worry a big old slap on the behind and saying, “Move along. We don't need you no mo'.”