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first of all — hi to all the new faces here!! if you're new, welcome to That Mom. this is the place where ambitious moms come to feel less crazy and more like themselves. I write about quitting the things that drain you, trusting your own instincts, and building a life you actually like — not one the internet told you to want.
okay, now buckle up because this one's spicy.
because I’m really gonna get real with you. there is going to be tough love. there is going to be some choice words. but I need you to know it’s because when it comes to living life I abso-fucking-lutely do not fuck around.
and that’s because at a young and formative age, I saw up close that life is short. too short for some. and if you’re still here with the privilege of getting older each day, my friend, you are indeed a lucky one.
and time is in fact on your side but only if you stop treating it like it’s the enemy. it is your greatest asset. and the only one you cannot replace. time is a very serious thing and if you don’t intrinsically value it, it’s going to work against you.
if there is something you want to do with your time and you tell yourself “I don’t have time” or “I wish I had time to learn photography” or “I’ll do that thing when I have time”. you are lying to yourself. and you should be more important to you than to lie to yourself.
there’s a reason there’s that meme that goes around that’s like “I just need to get through this week” but it’s on an endless loop. and if you’re not careful you are going to like every week like that for decades before you stop to realize how much time has gone by and you didn’t pursue the things you wanted to or that you enjoy. and I don’t want that for you.
my life’s philosophy is this. on my death bed I do not want to sit there and wonder “what if”. and I think about it daily. it motivates me on every level. what will my 90 year old self be thinking? and I want that wise ass version of myself to have so many stories that I reminisce about, I want her to have so many stories about how things went wrong but led her to exactly where she was meant to be, I want my kids and my grandkids to tell wild, radical stories about me. and that doesn’t happen when you live your life constantly telling yourself “I don’t have time.”
and therein lies the first step. you must stop lying to yourself that you don’t have time. because you do. it might not be the perfect time or the perfect set up but oh you do have time.
who was it that said “whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right”? same thing with time my friend. if you constantly tell yourself you don’t have time, you’re right. tell yourself you do have time and magically it appears.
remember that time isn’t real in the sense of what it feels like. an hour spent doing something you love feels like 5 minutes. five minutes waiting for a pregnancy test result, might as well be an hour it feels so long. so if time is already stretchy and weird, why not stretch it in your favor?
okay enough woo woo and mindset fluff Casey, let’s really get down to the details about time management.
first, and this is going to sound familiar if you read my last post — you are going to have to quit some things. I am a professional quitter at this point and I’m not even a little sorry about it. if you missed that essay, go read “call me a quitter, less really is more” after this because it’s the foundation for everything I’m about to say.
but the short version is: you cannot add time to your life without subtracting the stuff that’s eating it. so what do you hate doing? what’s clogging up your minutes and honestly your mental space? your kid’s T-ball season just ended? DON’T SIGN THEM UP FOR ANYTHING. take an activity break as a family. one season missed of baseball or gymnastics is not going to cost your kid an olympic medal down the line, I promise you.
but you, if you have extra time to get back to painting or get back to the gym or finally read the books that have been collecting dust on the shelf — that’s going to make one hell of a difference to 80 year old you.
here’s what else I’d quit or outsource if you can swing it:
cleaning your house. hire someone even once a month. I promise you the guilt wears off faster than you think and what replaces it is the wild realization that you just got two hours of your life back every single week.
doing laundry. outsource it or at the very least stop folding things that don’t need to be folded. I haven’t folded a fitted sheet in years. life goes on. nothing bad has happened.
stop making elaborate dinner recipes. I am guilty as charged on this one but when I let go of the Instagram-worthy meal and just made tacos for the third time this week, I got 45 minutes back and nobody complained. not once.
create a new standard of “clean enough.” your house doesn’t have to be magazine-ready. it has to be livable. lower the bar on this one and watch how much space opens up in your brain.
scrolling on your phone. you already know I’m going to say download the Opal app. my screen time is down 60% and that’s not a typo. the amount of time I got back from this alone is kind of embarrassing lol c
second, now that you’ve freed up more time by quitting stuff that clogs up our minutes and mental space honestly, we are going to double down and find other ways to stretch the time we have or just plain create more.
and yes, you betcha, I’m going to tell you to wake up before your kids. that’s literally how I write this newsletter, or is it more like a blog? anyway, I am writing the second chunk of this post right now at 6:40am. I have ten more minutes of writing before I stop to do a daily meditation and then wake up my kids.
when I say that this Substack is written in tiny pockets of time, I mean it so literally. this morning I had twenty minutes. yesterday it was ten minutes before I got my oldest off the bus.
one of the biggest “a-has” of my motherhood was this time last year when I realized if I kept waiting for the ideal stretch of time like 90 minutes of a quiet house, I was never going to accomplish anything.
(and then obviously I wrote an entire post about it linked here lol)
or I’d have to wait until I was 56 when all the kids leave the house. and we already know from above that’s not an option for me.
so, where in your daily life are your tiny pockets of time and how are you using them? are you waiting in the line at drop off? you could be bring one of those books you keep meaning to start. or you could record a podcast in your car. or you could keep a sketch pad and pencil in your car and start concepting a new painting.
and if you’re sitting here thinking “Casey, I literally do not have a single minute without my kids” then bring them with you. I’m serious. you want to get back to being creative for fun? set up crayons and coloring for your kids at the table and take an online art class right next to them. you’re creating, they’re creating. yes, there will likely be interruptions, but for me, doing it with them, with the interruptions is so much better than the feeling of “I never get to do things I enjoy anymore.”
I’ve been wanting to learn guitar for years. I grew up listening to my dad play guitar and he actually recently gave me the guitar he played for us growing up and I love playing it so much more than a new guitar. so now I take my guitar outside while my kids play on the playground and I practice while they do their thing. is it a focused, uninterrupted practice session? absolutely not. but am I learning guitar? am I pouring into myself and doing something I enjoy immensely? yes I am. and my kids get to see their mom pursuing something that has nothing to do with them and that might be the most important part honestly.
we’ve convinced ourselves that we need kid-free, distraction-free, perfect conditions to pursue anything. you don’t. you just need to start. bring the kids. they’ll be fine. you’ll be better.
third. and this is the one I’m still working on, is protect your time. if you don’t leave yourself time to do nothing or a few days a month with not one single thing on the calendar then those tiny pockets of time I talked about? you’re going to be way too exhausted to use them.
in order to truly show up for yourself, you need time to just be yourself. to hear yourself think. to stop running on autopilot or the hamster wheel you’re on. that’s the opposite of time bending and stretching and slowing down. when you are constantly booked and busy time feels like a slippery fish you can’t quite get a grip on but are frantically trying to grab it.
look at your calendar right now. I’m serious. pull it up. look at this month. is there a single weekend where the plan is literally nothing? is there one weeknight where nobody has practice, nobody has a playdate, and you don’t have anywhere to be? if the answer is no then I need you to hear me when I say: you are the one who filled that calendar. and you are the one who can unfill it.
in my recent attempts to stop over optimizing every minute of my life, I stopped listening to a podcast or audiobook on my walks. and instead just listen to the nature sounds and give my brain the space to think freely and be in my body instead of my hectic head. and I gotta tell you I feel better.
I’m also currently trying to make new local friends now that I’m out of the super baby stage and we’re down to one nap on the schedule. and I want to leave my schedule open to meet new people for coffee or drinks. I want to leave room in my calendar for spontaneous outings and magic honestly. and I have to tell you it works! when you’re calling something in or wanting to manifest something, you have to make space to receive it. who knew?
if there’s one thing I’m glad I never started as a mom, it’s packing the calendar with constant activities. if that makes you and your family happy, I love that for you!! but that would and does make me miserable lol so I always make sure we have at least one whole weekend a month at home with nothing to do. it’s our family time anchor and I find my kids always look forward to a weekend at home. which makes sense because they are half me after all. and, for real, my kids don’t need back to back activities planned. what they actually NEED is a mom who isn’t stressed and overstimulated every second. just in case you needed a permission slip to stop the activity madness, here it is!!
here’s what I know for sure. in ten years you are not going to remember the clean house. you’re not going to remember the folded laundry or the elaborate Wednesday night dinner. you’re going to remember the book you finally wrote. the painting you started at the kitchen table while your kids ate goldfish. the morning you woke up at 5:45am and wrote something that made you feel like yourself again.
you are not too busy. you are not out of time. you have been lied to by a culture that tells moms their time belongs to everyone but them. and I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be like that.
your time is yours. it always has been. and the only person who gets to decide how you spend it is you. you have all you need to bend and stretch time the way you want to. and you need to do it now.
this is urgent!!! because this is your one and only life. no more waiting for the kids to get older. no more waiting until your house is bigger or your car is “nicer”. or the worst one, waiting until you lose weight. no, no, no. you’re life is going by whether you do the thing or not. you can get bendy with time yes, but it is still in fact going by. no. more. waiting. you promise?
now go find ten minutes and do something that makes 80-year-old you proud!!! and then come back and tell me what you did in the comments! I want to know and cheer you on!
p.s. I’m building something special for the moms who want to go deeper with me. more on that soon. if you want in first, reply to this email and tell me what you’d want from a paid tier. I’m all ears. 🤍
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