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This week’s question.

Luz writes: How do I have more time in the evening, to do things I love, like knitting? I get in from work just after 6pm usually, and somehow by the time I've prep'd and eaten dinner, and food for the next day, and washed up, it's always gone 9pm. The OH is pretty good at sharing the jobs but tends to work longer hours than me. Food prep at the weekends sounds like a great idea but the weekends are always busy too... I have literally NO IDEA how this happens!

This seems like a practical problem, and I propose we treat it as such unless and until it proves otherwise.

So, first part of the practical approach: define the problem with precision.

You say “somehow“ it takes three hours to prep eat dinner and clean up. Now, that doesn’t seem crazy to me, and it also seems like a nice way to spend the evening, again to me, but not to you, so let’s find out what’s really happening. Let’s define that “somehow.”

In the days of Henry Ford and IBM and those guys, they would figure out how long stuff takes by watching and measuring (other people’s work). You could do that one evening. Set a timer for 15 minutes starting when you get home and keep hitting repeat. Every time the timer goes off write down what you’ve been doing for the last 15 minutes. One evening of that should be revealing.

My guess is that you’ll discover there are more activities happening. Some of them, including things other ppl regard as worthless (TikTok, say) might be worthwhile to you. Some of them might not. You get to decide, but you have to be conscious of what you’re doing first.

So that’s thing one. Figure out where that time is really going. And again, maybe you find out the only thing happening is dinner prep, dinner and dinner cleanup. I keep hearing that’s how they do it in Europe, anyway.

Next up: sounds like you live with at least one other person. You mentioned they are “pretty good at sharing jobs” which could mean “pretty good” or “real shit.” I don’t know!

But I do know “pretty good” does not mean “great, excellent, just what I have in mind and I don’t have to constantly ask, either.”

You also say they work more than you do, so if they’re contributing more, it’s possible that you have an equitable distribution of labor going in your household.

(That would be unusual.)

But have you priced out the cost of hiring dinner prep and dinner cleanup though? Tell you what: that don’t come cheap. So don’t be selling yourself short. Just because the world doesn’t value your labor doesn’t mean you have to agree.

Your question is about how to get more time for what you really want to do, so I also wonder: do you have an equitable amount of leisure time? Do you knit for two hours a week, while your partner is on the Playstation for 12? Are you absorbing more than your share of keeping two adults alive while your efforts get invisibilized?

If that is happening, you can bring it into the light. Many people have negotiated fairer ways of sharing the work of keeping food on the table. See TikTok for 1,000,000 examples of thrilling feminist victories.

Here’s another possibility: maybe you can have some nights where all you do is cook, eat, and clean up. And some nights where you nibble (see Kyla Cobbler on this point) or get takeout and all you do is knit, eat, knit and throw out empty deli containers. I hear that’s how they do it in large parts of America anyway.

So to recap.

1. Get clarity on exactly what’s happening starting when you get home.

2. Get clarity on what’s really important to you and maybe dump the rest. The book Lazy Genius by Kendra Adachi may be of use to you here. She also has a book dedicated solely to food work, called The Lazy Genius Kitchen.

2a. What if you snuck in a day off? Just called in sick? It’s known to be an effective emergency measure. Stay at home, knit, eat snack foods. I’m doing it RIGHT NOW.

3. Get clarity on the distribution of household labor starting with the adults. Don’t spend your precious life invisibly absorbing more work while your partner invisibly gets more leisure.

4. And look to see: how do you enjoy the knitting time when you get it? It seems like knitting etc. is what you’re looking for, but is there something more? Is there maybe something even better? Let the knitting show you.

And plz write back and let me know how it goes!

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But you can support my work by buying my book! I reread it about a year ago, on its first birthday, and I thought, Damn!! That’s a good book!!

(Cheap, too.)

I know you’ve been told 1,000,000 times that disregulated eating is nearly impossible to overcome.

THAT IS NOT TRUE. If your eating troubles you, if you’re a chaotic eater, a nervous eater, a binge eater, an “emotional” eater: this book will teach you how to regulate your eating in less time than it takes to read.

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RECOMMENDING.

writing.

Over at Modern Daily Knitting, A Decade of Self Care.

Meeting Brooklyn tattoo artist and fashion designer Gossamer Rozen (@grelysian) was an awakening of sorts for me. Since then, I have been finding the means and motivation of taking my own writing more seriously.

Formerly I would be downright embarrassed by anything I produced almost the moment I had produced it. Kinda like the way a brand new car loses half its value the moment you drive it off the lot. Whatever I made, I’d feel like I needed to immediately do it all over.

RIP that foolishness.

And now MDK is entering its tenth year, and my regular monthly column along with it. A honest-to-god dream come true.

reading.

Rereading Alan Moore’s Promethea. Among other things, it’s an overview of the magic of Aleister Crowley. It’s very, very beautiful.

And I finally finished Patrick Hoffman’s Friends Helping Friends. Took a long time, because I found the villains terrifying.

I am just going to slightly spoil things by saying hateful characters do not prevail. Decency prevails, and Friends is a ripping yarn. I predict you will like it!

watching.

In the spirit of the season, I’m watching Agatha All Along with my kid. I believe it is the fourth time through for us both. Do not emulate us!

knitting.

Past the halfway mark on my Elvan shawl. I love her so much! It is helping me lay waste—WASTE I tell you! highkey laying Conan-the-Barbarian-energy WASTE—to the idea of things “being too hard.”

You have this? “It’s too HARRRRRRDDDD”? I’m so over this stupid bullshit. That one thought has ruled way too much of my life, from orbit, you know, just out of sight.

Well it’s having a harder time staying hidden these days. I’m doing all sorts of things that used to be dismissed—with regret—as too hard, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what are you gonna do?? I can’t!! Just TOO HARD!!

But somehow, probably the combined effects of therapy and spiritual practice, I decided it would NOT be too hard to learn intarsia, so I have, and my shawl is not perfect, but I am crazy about it.

(Also if you are so inclined, the Elvan Shawl kit is being discounted on MDK right now.)

And that makes this 1. another example of taking my own work seriously, and whyever not, sure enough it really spites life-wrecking Voices of Doom-n-Whybother and 2. The WEEK.

I wish you a glorious weekend and I will talk to you soon!