Obstacle Course Days

Today was an obstacle race set in a maze. The obstacles and disruptions were minor, when you consider the state of the world, but they felt like a minefield. My stress level kept spiking. My patience was in smithereens. My spirits were weighed down by anxiety. And the frustration of encountering a hundred little irritations that would not let me think or read or write or do anything substantial, decimated the rest of the day. What was the purpose of such a life? 

Outside in the world, which may or may not be the real world, people did earth-shattering things that strangely, still left the world much as it was before my irritating day started. Nevertheless, these brilliant things (for no one is ever less than brilliant any more) made my day seem even worse. 

What is this life, I wanted to scream, if full of domestic disruptions, we cannot find time to blog? (Sorry, WH Davies) Just simple blogging.

This insane, disappointing day is done. The truth is that in the cracks and gaps between its annoying disruptions and despite my dramatic feelings about them, I did a great deal of work today. I got many things done that were important and essential. 

In women's lives, the clear work-day does not exist whether you go somewhere to work or you work from home. Responsibility stalks you, and trips you up, and lurches into your path from the shadows, and just when you think you've figured things out, the earth shifts. Most of us have learnt to persist and to work like thieves, stealing the time and bandwidth we can from here and there. 

It is truly a miracle that most of us manage to do what we do. When I was very young, a working woman said to me that she needed a wife who would make chapatis for her when she came home. I mocked her later. She was so right! Every working woman needs the kind of support that wives have provided in patriarchal societies. It's not just chapatis, which we can now order, but the entire gamut of backend logistical management and emotional labour that has freed men up to think deep thoughts without a care. 

When women aspire to do other things, it becomes a zero sum game but the inevitability of care responsibility removes the element of choice. They want to and should have it all but the cost is very high and often paid as poor mental and/or physical health. 

As for me, today, I will have to console myself on the tasks I completed and take some comfort in having survived the domestic obstacle course still calm enough to write this post.