This Pregnancy is Kicking My Butt
I'm just so tired, y'all.
Traveling, specifically road tripping, was really great because it has a particular rhythm to it. We spent two nights in Brussels and three nights in Paris, but everywhere else we stayed for just one night, which meant that most days followed the routine of getting up, packing up, and checking out by a particular time. Then it was usually drive into town and sightsee for a bit, probably stop at a bakery for second breakfast, before hitting the road and heading to our next stop. It was definitely a tiring experience, but I wanted to be doing it so much that I was happy to push through my tiredness. I can't be bothered by aching feet or heartburn so bad that it wakes me up in the night when there is French impressionism to admire and Belgian chocolate to eat.
But now that I'm back in Berlin and back to my usual routine, the physical strain of this pregnancy is weighing on me. We got home last Wednesday and on Thursday and Friday I had doctor's appointments in the morning and I did my virtual assistant gig for a couple of hours in the afternoon and... that was it. I really want to do more with days. I really want to write and practice German and exercise and read books and keep the house clean, and when I look at my calendar it seems like there should be enough time to do all of those things and more. But there just... isn't.
I keep wanting to write the sentence: I don't know how people can work full-time while pregnant. But that's not true. I know exactly how people can do that. They do it because they have to in order to survive or because they want to - because they find their careers fulfilling or because capitalism has convinced them that their self-worth and value are dependent on their productivity. If I had a full-time job right now, I'm sure I would be managing to do it while pregnant. But instead I am underemployed and my time is mostly my own and that is, as it has always been, a great privilege and also a challenge. In my experience, it is easier to push through fatigue (or discomfort or pain) when someone else is relying on me (and paying me) to push through it. It is harder to push through fatigue (or discomfort or pain) when I am trying to achieve my own self-directed goals.
Anyway.
I'm going to wrap up here because I've been working on this newsletter for over an hour now, and that's actually something I wanted to mention. The time I spend on this newsletter has steadily creeped upwards since I started it. To the point that yesterday I wrote On / Off in the morning and I did my virtual assistant gig in the afternoon and... that was it. Okay, to be fair, that wasn't actually it. I also cooked dinner and played D&D with my family yesterday evening. But writing On / Off and doing my day job was all I managed to get done during the workday. So, while this newsletter does continue to serve me because it helps me to write on a regular schedule, I would really like to redirect some of the time I spend on it towards other pursuits.
I don't know exactly what this will mean for you as readers - probably shorter and more typo-ridden issues of the newsletter? I suppose I'm mentioning this in the hopes that it will help me feel better about writing shorter and more typo-ridden issues of the newsletter...