The quest for micro me-time (got 5 ideas so far!)

I have been feeling emotionally under the weather these past few weeks.

There is no single reason. My youngest just started walking and is being curious about everything. He is reaching for everything, climbing everything, and narrating the whole day in a language only he fully understands. My eldest is in primary school now. While he is more independent, such independence arrives with its own list: big meal lunchboxes every morning, soccer practice two evenings a week, a match every Sunday morning (there is literally no chance of sleeping in).

On top of all of it, there is the PhD, of course. (Quiet solidarity to the other mothers doing this with small children underfoot. I do not know how any of us are still upright.)

I keep reminding myself that this phase is short and does not happen twice. My children need me in this particular way only for a little while, and I would rather be worn out and present than rested and somewhere else. So, I’ve been trying to find micro ways to keep me sane, given that time is a luxury I don’t have at the moment. Small, unglamorous, fitted into the cracks of the day.

Let’s be honest: I yearn for an hour long of full body massage or pilates session, but not sure how I could make it work at the moment. Hence, this is what I’ve been doing:

1. Walking the block with the baby in the pram, a coffee in one hand and my favourite musical numbers in my ears. Sometimes I do this while taking my eldest to school — catching two birds with one stone! Very efficient.

2. A scrub or a handful of bath salt in a warm shower, followed by body butter that smells nice! A few minutes of treating my own skin like it belongs to someone worth the trouble.

3. Reading a book while breastfeeding! Let us be honest about the logistics. I cannot open a laptop with a feeding baby, and I cannot write a doctoral thesis on my phone. A book is the one thing that fits in one hand and still feeds the part of me that is not a mother. Right now it is KC Davis’s How to Keep House While Drowning, which gives advice I have needed to hear that more than I expected.

4. Writing and reading on Substack. This space has quietly become one of my steadier forms of rest, which is a strange thing to say about something that also looks like work.

5. Going to a cafe also takes too much time sometimes, so I’ve been trying to make treats I could enjoy at home, such as this pistachio loaf or dirty matcha.

What does your micro me-time look like, the version that fits the season you are actually in and not the one you wish you had?

Also, if you are reading something in the cracks, one-handed or three pages at a time, leave me the title. My list is short — I need new book recommendations! ;-)

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