Supermom

I had to be at work at 10am the other day. Half of you are saying, oh, that’s nice, you got a little extra time in the morning. The other half of you, who, like me, only work at night (or rarely, if at all), feel my pain. Even with three cups of coffee laced with espresso and speed, my brain does not turn on that early. I don’t know how I ever held down a day job (I’m sure my former bosses will agree). My brain doesn’t fully wake up until about four in the afternoon. And what ends up happening, if I don’t get the five hours I need to wake up slowly and quietly, and if I have to interact with people or do things during that time, I get a little hyper and/or extraordinarily cranky. I apologize to any of you who have ever had to deal with me before noon.

Now, thanks to extended periods of not having anything to do or anywhere to go, I have been able to realize that I need a LOT of peace and quiet. Some may call that selfish. Call it whatever you like (the term selfish when applied to any of my behavior is not a stretch by any means), but I refuse to live without my alone time. Not only do I need audible quiet (silence is heaven) but visual quiet as well. That means everything organized, nothing out of place. If I walk into an extremely disorganized space, my brain explodes and I can’t function. So I help people who somehow don’t understand how to organize- to make the world a better place.

On the day in question when I had to be at work at ten, I was working for a woman I call Supermom. This woman is married to her college sweetheart who comes from money, is super-involved with their kids and works from home doing some genius computer something, she’s traveled all over the world, has a gorgeous sprawling house in the suburbs and a summer house on the Cape, was valedictorian of her class, has a master’s degree from Wharton, worked her way up to being the VP of a MAJOR pharmaceutical company, has three of the sweetest, most intelligent, well-adjusted children you’ll ever meet, and decided to leave her job a year or two ago to spend more time with them. So she immediately started her own consulting company and became the president of the PTA.

I got to work on time that day for perhaps the first time ever, and went upstairs to her office. I haven’t seen her in a while or spent time at the house- I’ve had a project that I “work on” at home (for five hours at a time the night before I told her I’d have it completed). In the span of a few months, not only is she running her own consulting firm, acting as the president of the PTA and fulfilling her various charitable duties, she has joined another consulting firm and is also working freelance.

Supermom wakes up at 5am every morning. She gets on average I would say 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night if she’s lucky. She drinks Diet Coke the way the rest of us breathe air. At any given moment, she’s in the middle of ten things. She is unable to complete thoughts and formulate sentences at times. We can never find a time to meet up, because she has no free time. She’s constantly a half hour late to all appointments and I’m getting anxious just thinking about it. Being in her presence, in this environment, makes me a teensy bit tense. I was at the house for three hours, and I had to take a nap when I got home because I was so exhausted.

On paper, her list of achievements is very impressive- it sounds like she’s got it all. She is the American dream (or is that Paris Hilton…?). She works hard and she achieves. Is this really what everyone is trying to accomplish? Working eighteen hours a day at a job that has no personal significance, having a family that you don’t have any time or energy to spend with, being constantly emotionally and mentally exhausted, and having two homes and a lifestyle you can’t financially keep up with, except to work eighteen hours a day at a job you could have picked out of a hat?

You can keep your dream, America, and if you’d like to know what to do with it, I have a couple of suggestions. I am over $125,000 in debt from trying to play your game. I did the “work 18 hours a day and try to have it all” thing. I had a nervous breakdown. Twice.

If I was to ask Supermom if she's happy, I'm sure she'd tell me that she love her family and the sacrifice is worth it; right before she spontaneously combusts.