This video resonated with me so much.

I never get to sit down and enjoy my life.

I wouldn’t say I “never get to,” but I’m so caught up in the planning, doing, and managing that I’m rarely fully present. And that feels awful — like I’m squandering this time while also failing to be a good enough parent, partner, daughter, sister, friend.

I feel like I’m making conscious choices with my time and energy, and there’s still not enough to go around.

I’ve felt this way for more than five years now. I kept thinking it would ease up: after I stopped caretaking for my mom, after the pandemic, after Cam got older, after I loosened my grip on certain family responsibilities, after I outsourced as much as possible.

I’ve prioritized sleep and exercise. I’ve continued to make time for therapy. I’ve lowered my standards for what I cook, how thoroughly I clean, how and when I show up for people. I try to care less, worry less, think less. (That part is especially slow going.)

It has gotten a little better, but not meaningfully, and I’m not sure what other levers I have left to pull. I genuinely don’t understand how other people are managing everything.

And I know how incredibly fortunate I am. I don’t forget that for a second. 

I think about everything my parents survived and sacrificed. About what my brother and I lost in our childhoods. Sometimes it feels impossible to reconcile that history with the fact that I still feel so… depleted? by a life that is, by any reasonable measure, a fantastic one.

This is not to say that I’m not happy. I am! But it’s really hard to feel like you’re constantly falling short.

Another apology letter, since my shy little guy isn’t yet great with verbal apologies. I think there are going to be a lot more of these in our future. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Last week, a utility worker gifted Cam a ceramic electrical insulator while he watched them replace a pole. (For the record, I had no idea what it was until I looked it up later 😅.) Yesterday evening, he picked me a tiny handful of flowers (🥹) and insisted we use it as a vase.

I got a worksheet this morning. I finished, but he says I have another 1,000 to do.

Me: I love every part of you. Did you know that?
Cam: …Even my stinky butthole?

I love this time of year. All of our trees bloom pink flowers all at once. There’s heart-shaped everything everywhere. You have an excuse to get your friends little treats. IT’S ALL SO FREAKING CUTE.

Cam is turning me into the official photographer of Things That Would Never Make the Cut. Not grand sights or celebratory moments, he wants the stuff I’d normally walk right past.

“Can you take a picture of that please? It’s so beautiful.” or “Mama, take a picture of this. I want to draw it.”

And I’ll look… and it’ll be a tiny cookie stamped with a little bear face. Or the way his sliced pineapple guava looks at 6am. Or a perfect-to-him line of dominoes. Or a literal piece of trash.

He’s asking because he wants to hold on to it — to study it, to cherish it, to remember it on purpose. So my camera roll has become an strange gallery: a lone leaf on my windshield on a rainy day, the tight woven pattern of a carpet, an unremarkable plush pumpkin in a store window, the way he’s pressed his backpack straps together, just so.

He may come by this naturally, or he may have picked it up from me. I do my own version of this too: I take imperfect pictures of random moments — blurry, off-center, badly lit — not because they’re “good,” but because I want to remember. My camera roll is where I put the little things I don’t want to lose.

None of it is headline-worthy. But he’s always reminding me the ordinary is worth noticing. And I’m so lucky to see through his eyes for a moment and notice how much tiny beauty there is everywhere.

Cam found his flower the day after he picked it — wilted and folded in on itself — and he immediately fell apart. Listening back, I can hear myself filling the space when I should’ve just stayed quiet and let him feel his feelings. But I was really caught off guard. He was curled into a little ball on my lap, his face twisted with grief like this was the biggest pain he’d ever known. It was the saddest, sweetest thing.