Balance

My apologies for the silence.  There hasn't be a lot to say lately.  Or, more correctly, there just hasn't been a lot of energy with which to say the things I'd like to.  It throws me into a spin when I go days without any forward progress on my novel or even taking a few moments to write here.

Several weeks ago I was hired by a family to help with overnight care of newborn triplets.

Yep, it's as hard as it sounds.

And it's not because the babies are difficult.  They are great, really, other than a little reluctant to burp now and then.  But it's that whole quantity vs. quality thing....  The other morning (3 a.m., really) I was scrambling to finish the 2 a.m. feeding so I could go home and finally close my eyelids for the kind of sleep one cannot get when subconsciously remaining alert to the stirrings and chirps of three little ones.  Baby A finished eating but had yet to burp a second time despite ten minutes of patting and repositioning.  I know he needed to burp because he curled his legs up and squinched his face together, throwing in a whimper every so often.  Baby B had begun eating, and before I could finish with him, Baby C was squirming.  Between those three babies at one feeding, I ended up changing at least seven diapers.  Because the babies were small and spindly, they are in multiple layers of clothing to help keep their temperature regulated, meaning there typically is a couple minutes of snapping, zipping, and coercing limbs into layers of fabric.  Somewhere between trying to feed two at once, coordinating burping, and waste management, I traveled from freezing to dripping with sweat...  That was just one feeding, one of the hardest I've had so far.  Thankfully, they usually run a bit more smoothly as long as they're not  having a competition for who can poop the most in teeny increments.

All of that to say I've been more sleep-deprived this past week than I have in a while.  Even when a feeding goes smoothly, I often only have an hour, maybe a skoch more, to catch a nap before it's time to warm bottles and start it all over again.  So, I've been surviving on an hour of sleep here, an hour of sleep there....  You know, like the parent of a newborn (or three) would.  It has not been good for my creativity, really, because every time I find myself in a quiet spot with no babies to care for or alarms to answer to, I konk out.

In terms of my writing, I was supposed to have 50,000 words by the end of December and what I have is more like 31,000.  I'm getting a trickle here and a trickle there.  Times when I could write--my brain is mostly awake--the nagging thought in the back of my mind is that I should sleep because I'm going to be really sad about skipping that nap when I'm on the other side of 2 a.m.

I don't know whether to relax on my goal because it's not worth killing myself over while I'm doing this doula job, or what.  It seems like there will always be an obstacle in my way to either hurdle or hinder.  What is the right thing to do?

There is no question in my heart what I want to do with my life, and it's taken me a very long time to come to the conclusion that it's possible.  Finding the balance between my dream and my day (or overnight) job is the trick.

Balance sometimes seems like a mythical creature.