2021-02-27 A Simple Strategy for

Women are not doing great right now. Parents are not doing great. Couples are not doing great. Single people? Not great. Introverts are not doing great, nor are extroverts. Also not doing great: young people; old people; in-between people… you get it.

In her own primal scream on Medium, the writer Lena Gilbert details how she is simply trying, like so many of us, to balance her household responsibilities with supervising her children’s remote schooling with attempting to get some work down with also attempting to stay, well, balanced. And she shares a technique she uses when she’s feeling really unraveled: “Sometimes, just to witness myself, and to feel like a writer, I write down what I’ve done for the day.”

On the day she writes about, this includes putting away laundry, feeding herself and her children, taking in the news, and managing a difficult conversation with her ex. None of these things count as “work,” exactly, or will be memorable, or are photogenic, or impressive. But taken as a whole, they are meaningful.

It’s a trick we can all use to witness ourselves on difficult days when it feels like all we can do is spin our wheels. What was today? Make a list. We’re doing things; we’re living. After all, sometimes putting away the laundry is the work.