How to Handle Another %$@#! Interruption

It’s hard to believe that this month’s Wonder Club on Meditations for Mortals is almost at an end! I have had so much fun wondering about this book and connecting with so many others about it. Here’s what we’ve Wonder-ed about for the last 3 weeks:

Week One: What is the opposite of an affirmation?
Week Two: Are you “planning ahead” or lost in the future?
Week Three: The week I did whatever the hell I wanted to

On Sunday, I’ll be hosting a Meditations for Mortals Wonder-fest!💥💥💥 This finale party for our Wonder Club will include thoughts from writers all around Substack. It’s going to be fuuun, so make sure you join us! (As in, open your email! Show up in the comments!)

Then I’ll be taking off a week or two to regroup and muse about what’s next at Living the In-Between Times, so stay tuned…

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At the beginning of January, in the post announcing the launch of this Wonder Club, I wrote:

Most “self-help” books (especially those written by men, sorry) sound good in theory, but in practice, crumble under the weight of the grind of modern-day momming.

For the most part, I feel like Meditations for Mortals has successfully avoided the wild patriarchal assumptions and privilege that can infuse books about productivity and time. I’ve appreciated the humility and down-to-earthness in most of Oliver Burkeman’s suggestions. But when it came to the topic of interruptions this week, this passage just rubbed me wrong way:

“Going through life with a rigid commitment to the elimination of interruption and distraction might seem like a way to stay more absorbed in what’s happening. Yet in fact it pulls you out of it, by undermining your capacity to respond to reality as it actually unfolds–to seize unexpected opportunities and to be seized by an awe-inspiring landscape or fascinating conversation… to find enjoyment, as opposed to annoyance, in a small child bursting into your study, while fulfilling your obligations as a parent.” (emphasis mine)

I get that Burkeman is advocating for “going with the flow,” suggesting we’ll probably be happier if we avoid fighting reality—Interruptions happen! Resisting them only causes more suffering!

But what I felt as I read his words, was the same suffocating feeling I get when I hear, “Enjoy this time! It goes so fast!” Which sometimes can be code for, “Put yourself, your desires, your comfort, your needs on hold, so that you can give all your attention to your family!”

Without a doubt, my kids are the best things that have ever happened to me. Two miraculous blessings I wouldn’t trade for the world. And also, the constant care and tending they require, the perpetual pull of time, energy, and focus required by mothering drains me in a way that may be hard for non-moms to understand. The gestalt of the experience called “motherhood” has been both/and for me.

So, I want to say this here:

Ahem, no, caretakers of the world, you actually don’t have to enjoy interruptions.

While it’s sweet that Burkeman was able to find a way to enjoy his kid bursting in to interrupt him, if you are a caregiver and you don’t feel merry and delighted by life’s interruptions, nothing has gone wrong.

The inescapable truth of #momlife is that focus is scarce. Most moms I know are perpetually struggling to scrape together 15 or 20 straight minutes to make progress on a task (any task!). To be asked to enjoy the moments when these precious, scrounged-together chunks are interrupted feels borderline offensive.

And the scant bits of research I've done on interruptions this week shows that interruptions can deliver a measurable, biological blow:

Frequent interruptions can lead to higher rates of exhaustion, stress-induced ailments, and a doubling of error rates.¹

Our biology is sending us a clear message that focus is a necessity, but the platitudes we’re handed in motherhood suggest otherwise: You should be more available to your family, and you should be enjoying it!!

Twice last night I was so absorbed in my work that when one of my children made a comment to me, I wasn’t even able to hear it. The internet scolds would likely say, Put down your work. BE with your children! They deserve your full attention! But I’d been mothering all afternoon. Didn’t my work, which I also consider a calling, deserve attention, too?

It isn’t that I don’t want to be available to my kids. But rather, that the default mothering contract—that if I am home or within shouting distance, I thereby consent to the unceasing availability of my cognitive, physical or emotional labor—is untenable. This contract stands in direct opposition to my desire to create, to build something beautiful and significant, to interrogate the bigger questions of what it means to be fully alive.

I write all this knowing that I’m absolutely on the privileged end of motherhood. My kids are grown and fully capable of wiping their own butts and getting their own snacks (though they still frequently don’t). They’re getting better at keeping track of their own stuff and will even occasionally help me keep track of mine. Here’s your phone, mom! I get loads of help from my spouse and my family that lives locally.

And still, I crave more time, more separation, to be able to dive deeply into my own creativity and work.

And I don’t know whether it’s 13 years of parenting exhaustion or my middle-aged IDGAF-ness talking, but I am finally #sorrynotsorry about claiming this desire.

Burkeman is right about one thing, though. Wanting is not getting; interruptions are a fact of life, especially for caretakers. Rethinking my approach could probably do me some good, so, for now, I’m experimenting with a three-step process:

Step 1: Get mad. Go ahead and feel annoyed/frustrated/stressed by whatever is interrupting me.

Step 2: Get curious. Can I see that anger/frustration/stress as care? Both deep care for my work as well as maybe some care for the interrupter? (I know my aggravation is likely not their intent.)

Step 3: Get clear. Acknowledge this moment as a “postcard from the present”—here for me to respond to as I wish.

When I’m trying to get my writing done or the laundry sorted, and along comes a knock from my daughter, the repair guy, or a text from the school secretary. It’s as if each is waving to me from their own Right Now, as if to say, “Wish you were here!”

And I get to decide what to do next. Whether to put aside my own intentions and join them in theirs, or to, instead, sometimes, dash off a message of my own.
“Okay! Love you! I’ll see you when I’m done.”

1. https://hr.berkeley.edu/grow/grow-your-community/wisdom-caf%C3%A9-wednesday/impact-interruptions