My corporate mom guilt

How I ended the day feeling like shit

You’ll probably get tired of how inconsistent I am when it comes to talking about work. Some days I love it. I tell people the small tricks I’ve picked up and insist you don’t need everything figured out to make it feel worthwhile. Other days I’m in front of the screen close to tears, convinced I’ve ruined my life, exhausted, overrun, not sure how to go on. There isn’t a single name for it. I suppose I’m just someone with too many feelings.

This morning the alarm was my four month old. She was angry, demanding, maybe teething. Sleep is already a hit or miss. Waking up at 6:50 instead of 5 felt luxurious. Then I ran through the house, pulling the older two into motion, because if we weren’t in the car by 7:30 my son would be late for the sixth time.

Three children at thirteen, three, and four months. It feels like triage, every minute of the day. Add the job at a startup on top and I’m almost done for.

The house was already loud. The teenager was fussing over his hair. The toddler hated the way I opened the yogurt. God forbid you pull the lid all the way off. The baby was crying without pause. My husband struggled with a crustable cutter thing, insisting there wasn’t too much jam, until it busted out onto the counter. I didn’t bother saying anything. Sometimes marriage is just silence that’s very loudly pointed.

I made the mistake of checking Slack, which was already filling with notifications. I had managed not to check all weekend. The younger version of me, the one who swore she’d never become a corporate sellout, would have laughed at the contradiction of me having to be forcibly intentional with not checking. Then the toddler began her shoe argument. She wanted to do it herself, which meant standing in the hallway and interrogating me as she went: is this my left foot? why are my socks upside down? can I wear the sparkly ones instead? do I have to wear both shoes? can I wear one sandal and one sneaker? can you tie them tighter, no, looser, no, not like that?

I was already late. I picked her up, still mid-question, and carried her outside. She screamed while I buckled her in, voice hitting that pitch that just about serves as permanent birth control. I pulled out of the driveway and was careful not to clip my other car this time (a story for another day).

At the top of the street I noticed my 13 yr old for the first time that morning. He was bent over his phone. I ruffled his hair and he groaned, told me he’d spent forever fixing it. I keep forgetting he isn’t a baby. By the time we reached school he was two minutes late. Enough to be rerouted through the office doors. The crosswalk monitor waved me off like she always does. I gripped the wheel and it took everything in me to not just flip her off.

The toddler wanted Frozen. She cried when I turned on the wrong song. Then she told me not to sing. And when we finally arrived at her school, she ran in without saying goodbye.

By 8:30 I was back home, the baby on my chest, the laptop open. Emails, meetings, more meetings. Mondays at a startup feel like a dare you never agreed to, everyone demanding time you don’t have. I worked through breakfast. Through pumping. Through the noise of a crying baby. By evening I had been on calls for hours, half-nursing, half-typing, telling myself I’d catch up later even though there is no later, only more of the same.

At bedtime I did the checklist. Food, baths, the story they wanted to hear again even though I’d read it yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that day. What I was doing was rolling into the motions of presence. And then later, I found myself standing outside their door and realized my head had been somewhere else all day. Not with them. Just on work.

Last week I said I was only tired. But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s burnout.

I can love this job and hate what it takes from me. Both things can be true and coexist at the same time

I don’t have a fix, or any takeaway. Just this: that the part of me that isn’t attached to slack or emails feels worn. And admitting it, even in this very unorthodox messy kinda way, is the only relief I have.