I'm a stay at home mom. I haven't acknowledged that in any of my previous posts on here or on social media really. At the end of my maternity leave in March, when my final decision was due, I felt bone deep certainty about my choice. That doesn't mean I feel comfortable explaining it to other people, though. 

When I'm trying to be succinct (which I rarely succeed at), I explain that this decision makes financial and logistical sense to my family. And it does. And also, I believe I could not invest in writing the way I want to if I were a working mom, at least not with the 9 to 5 I had. Do my writing aspirations make financial and logistical sense for my family? No, but they matter to me and, fortunately, to my partner. 

I'm still figuring out what being a stay at home mom looks like for me. I'm formulating the job description, trying to nail down the duties and expectations. None of my friends are stay at home mom writers, but I've met some over the years. When I think of writers I admire who are also stay at home mothers, I think of Karen Joy Fowler, whom I saw speak at the Community of Writers in 2018. She shared that when she first had her writing published, she was advised by another writer friend not to say she was a homemaker when attending professional events. 

"Why?" Fowler remembered asking, "I'm proud to be a homemaker." 

Her friend replied, "Well, it's just that your house isn't that clean…"

As I write this, I am acutely aware of how dirty my house is. Dusty. Cluttered. Stained. Clean dishes haven't been put away. Cardboard boxes are piling up in the corner of my kitchen. All the bed sheets need washing. Dog and cat hair gather in every corner. They're not dust bunnies. They're dust clots. Dust tumbleweeds. 

When my husband went back to work and I started to spend more time at home alone with our newborn, I became acutely aware of how rapidly dust accumulated in our place. Sure, we have two long-haired dogs and a long-haired cat, but still, dust regenerated at a rate that I felt warranted scientific study. Something had to be done.

My husband and I don't want to follow the traditional model where I take on all of the domestic labor. However, because I'm home all the time, it only seems fair I take on more of the domestic labor than I did before when we were both working 9 to 5s. I decided I should defeat the dust. I started with dusting once a week. Not enough. Twice a week? Nope. Increasing the frequency of my cleaning did not reduce how often I noticed mess. In fact, the opposite seemed true. I'd do a lap with a dust mop and by the time I was done, I would catch sight of more dust whispering out from under the couch. More crumbs scattered under the kitchen table. Like they snuck out when I had my back turned. I told my husband I was beginning to suspect I needed to clean every room every day. 

Then, I remembered this quote:

“I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

When is a house clean enough? When it's spotless? When it looks like nobody lives in the house? This is an effective strategy to devalue housework, isn't it? To say that if the result is not perfect, it's worthless. It might as well not have been done. As though the cleaning person's effort comes with no cost and therefore can be redone and redone until it meets impossible standards. 

Wait, I thought as I pondered this, why does this reasoning feel so familiar?

In the first year of my MFA program, my professor Goldberry Long led a class focused on the revision process. Quickly I surmised that her ultimate goal was to help each of us discover and fortify our own writing process – or, in simpler terms, to get us writing and keep us writing. She introduced a system that she swore by. She broke her daily writing goals into three categories: Must Do, May Do, Wish Do. 

MUST DO

an extremely achievable writing goal. A writing goal you know you can accomplish every day, no matter what happens.

MAY DO 

a writing goal you can achieve on a pretty good day. You would like to do this every day, but if you have a tough day, you may not get to it.

WISH DO

a writing goal you can achieve on an ideal day – no plans or distractions. Just you and the blank page. 

In teaching us this system, Goldberry's biggest obstacle was not the May Dos or the Wish Dos. No, instead, she spent most of the class begging us to drastically reduce our Must Do goals. 

One of us would suggest, "Write a page a day!" 

She'd respond, "Too big. Go smaller. It should be something so minuscule, you'll be shocked if you can't do it. Write a single sentence! Go into the document and change one thing — even if it’s a comma!”

She explained that the point of this system was to prevent us from giving up. And the most common reason writers gave up was because they set unrealistic goals for themselves, became discouraged when they didn't meet these goals, and then allowed this discouragement to bloom into defeat. 

The most important thing I took from grad school was a pathological avoidance of perfectionism. Elizabeth Gilbert put it best when she recommended becoming "a deeply disciplined half-ass" in Big Magic. Have I been guilty of sending prose out into the world when it was too nascent and unpolished? Absolutely. But I rather have made this mistake than have never sent out anything. I've witnessed perfectionism thwart the most talented writers I've ever met. It is that serious.

Last year, I wrote a novel while working my 9 to 5. I did it by writing at least 1,000 words a day. Most days, the words I wrote were ghastly. But I kept going because my goal was 1,000 words a day. Not 1,000 good words a day. (I literally don’t think I could do 1,000 good words a day…)

I also kept going because sometimes, every week or so, there was a day where I felt like I was onto something. I resigned to this exchange: If I tolerated enough days of slogging through mediocrity, I would receive a day where I was pleased with what came out on the page. 

So I'm applying this approach to cleaning. The goal is not spotlessness. The goal is to just run the dust mop along the ground. Turn on the vacuum and take it on a tour of the room. So there's some dust left behind. That doesn’t mean I didn’t clean. That doesn't mean I failed. Because there’s no winning in cleaning. I’ll never clean so well I won’t need to clean again in a couple days (read: hours). 

Just like I’ll never write something so perfect, I’ll never need to write again. 

Just like I’ll never mother so perfectly that I won’t need to mother anymore. 

My therapist often reminds me of Donald Winnicott's philosophy about the "good-enough mother." I hold this idea like a rosary in my darkest moments.

Pinterest presented me with this meme the other day.

I tried to be like "haha" and scroll on, but the meme caught in my throat. Unfortunately, you will see me dead before you see me hopeless. I've got a little ember of maybe tomorrow will be better in my heart that can't be stamped out.

In the second year of my MFA program, I taught two creative writing workshops for undergrads. Like Goldberry, the most important lesson I wanted to impart was: figure out how to start writing and never stop. I told them that before they turned in their workshop submissions, they should hold up the pages up and say, "This is not me. This is just something I wrote yesterday. I can always write something new and better." 

Maybe that's what I love about mothering, writing, cleaning. They keep the promise of tomorrow crackling inside me. Maybe tomorrow I'll defeat the dust. Maybe tomorrow my house will be clean.