A few days ago -- after reading 15 books (one of which was Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, one of my favorite childhood reads, read in its entirety. She barely cracked a yawn.), an entire sippy cup of milk, singing "The Wheels on the Bus" at least a hundred times, lots of tossing and turning while my daughter said with sleepy-ish frustration, "Mommy, I want to sleep" -- my daughter finally fell asleep around midnight, and I had to acknowledge the reality: she no longer needs a nap.
When I woke up the next morning, the frustration and upset I felt at the 2.5+ hour bedtime from the night before was fresh in my mind. I thought, with steely resolve, *Okay, fine. We're done with naps. Let's freakin' go.* That day, I had a play date with another mom at the library, and it took up most of the day, so our first no-nap day felt easy. Breezy. (Sort of. My husband took over for awhile in the afternoon so I could fall into a very deep hour-long sleep on the couch, where I dreamed about trying to buy tacos from a biker bar but got caught in some kind of biker gang war.)
I've been sending letters here on Substack for 3 months now. It feels like both a very long time and no time at all. When I first started here, I felt so frantic about defining what this newsletter would be "about" and I felt so undecided about what to name it. So I named it something that felt familiar to me and my blog writing (Friday Bites). It didn't feel quite right, but I went with it anyway. Trying to summarize what my newsletter would be about felt like trying to fold clean clothes while my toddler rolled around in them. But I came up with something, and decided to just...do it. Just write. I can always change things later.
So I started sending letters. It felt important to get out of my head and just start. Stop worrying that no one would subscribe or be interested or read. As I started feeling my way around the Notes section, I tried not to be intimidated by all the other brilliant and beautiful work I encountered. I tried not to get discouraged into silencing myself after reading a lot of Discourse about the state of "good" and "bad" Substack writing. When people started sharing their subscriber counts, I tried not to feel inconsequential and a failure because my subscriber numbers are not huge.
Instead of scrolling Notes and getting sucked into all the noise, I read newsletters from my inbox first thing in the morning, and I use the Notes feature to find new letters to read. When I write, I tell myself that I'm writing for me because I love it and I need to and whoever needs to hear what I'm saying will find me.
Even so, I've been trying to not feel like a mess because my writerly instincts are punching their way out of the little niche box I've been trying to contain them in. Content creator wisdom (which is actually very different from writer wisdom) tells us to find our niche, to specialize, to compartmentalize. To put a magnifying glass on one interest and ignore all the rest. (Much like academia and the MFA, but that's a discussion for another time.)
I just cannot do that. Trying to compartmentalize myself and my writing and my thoughts is like trying to put my beloved late cat in a cat carrier. She clawed, spit, kicked, hissed, dead-fished, ran away, hid -- did everything she could to keep us from putting her in that small, dark cage, so I held her on my lap on the car rides to and from the vet. Everything was less stressful and went more smoothly when we stopped trying to cram her in a box and just let her breathe and be free.
So we're in the middle of transitioning to no-nap days. There have been a couple days where my girl has asked for a nap at 3pm, and I've given it to her. (And yes, on those days, she's fallen asleep past 10:30pm. On those nights, I have only myself to blame.)
I haven't fully recognized the extent to which I've built our days around naptime. When she was doing 3 naps a day, it felt impossible to do any activity that felt longer than a couple hours. When she dropped to 2, it felt a little easier to plan activities and work meetings around them. When she dropped to 1, it felt like a heavy blanket got thrown off our days. We had more flexibility, could plan longer outings. Dropping to zero naps, though, feels like starting a marathon that I am absolutely unprepared to run.
Naptime has always been *my* time. When I worked for someone else, I sometimes used nap time to get things done, and I disliked it very much. When I quit my job, naptime became my respite. Sometimes it was the only time in the day I got to sit down and rest. Sometimes I napped, or read, or caught up on my trash tv. I've structured our days around Before Naptime and After Naptime.
Now, without a nap to break up the day, there is no Before and After. It's all just...Endless Time.
I wake up in the morning and see my day stretch out before me like I-80 from Salt Lake City to my hometown in northern Nevada -- an infinite straight-shot drive under a relentless sun, very few rest stops, and nothing but blinding salt flats to feast my eyes on for what feels like an eternity. I have no idea what to do with all this Time and Space and Light in our days.
What Substack has given me in the midst of the all-over-the-place-ness of toddler motherhood is structure and an outlet. I've set the publishing timeline for myself, and I'm very proud that I've stuck to it. Even though I have days where the only person I talk to is a nearly-3-year-old, my brain doesn't feel like goo anymore, and I suspect it's partly because I'm using it to write and string semi-coherent sentences together on a regular basis.
Writing letters here has reminded me that there are things that I'm excited to write about that are not necessarily related to the niche (grief and motherhood and food) I've put myself in.
And I've decided to say fuck it. I'm going to write about whatever I want here. Because this writing (I've started to call it my public-facing writing) fuels my other writing -- my poems, my more vulnerable essays. I've learned about what I feel comfortable sharing here, in real-time, and what feels better to work on in private by myself and with trusted readers (and my therapist) when it comes time for it.
With the days stretching out like a wagon ride on the Oregon Trail (for a visual, see: Meek's Crossing), I'm starting to feel out our new rhythms, suss out what we need for this new phase we're embarking on. It requires more storytimes at the library, more nature walks, more art time, more playground trips. It requires letting go of guilt around screen time, and it requires more structure for my toddler. Within the structure I make for her, I know I will begin to find time for myself again, the way I did during nap time. (I just have to remind myself, on days that feel like absolute chaotic failures, that I'm doing my best, we're figuring this out, everyone is fed and clean, and tomorrow will be a new day, a clean slate, an opportunity to try again.)
We're about a week into our no-nap life, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable with all the Space, Time, and Light my days are seeing. I don't feel in control of anything, and we still don't have a lot of structure, but I'm figuring out how to adapt. It doesn't feel so daunting anymore -- it's starting to feel more like possibility.
Somehow, my Substack life feels like it's getting more Space, Time, and Light, too. With a no-nap day, I suddenly feel free to write about whatever I want, whether it has to do with motherhood, grief, and food or not. I'm cooking up some fun projects that I'll probably launch in the new year, one to do with cakes and the other with music.
6 months ago, I couldn't have even conceived of feeling capable of planning a regular newsletter, and here I am, doing the damn thing. I'm my own boss, I get to write about whatever I want, name it whatever I want, and I get to choose the box I put myself in. And guess what -- the boxes are getting recycled, and I'm heading out onto the open road.
Want Friday Bites in your inbox? You’re in luck — Friday Bites has moved to Substack!
If you want posts sent directly to your inbox, subscribe here!