Life admin

[Zoe Girl]

I am having a pretty strong reaction like Kib but in the other direction. I have spent so much time in my life trying to prove something because I do all these tasks. honestly when my kids were young I loved doing a lot of cooking, the cleaning went with it. I kept a strict budget and did most of my own tasks in many ways. I wasn't in a great marriage so there was not a give and take of life tasks, basically I say that I know how to do everything myself because I was married for a long time (and I hope that is not anyone else's experience). I even have the background of getting all zen like about everyday tasks so I do not judge washing dishes as less than doing another task. I am just tired, and I want to spend my energy other ways, and I see how women (and men) in my parents generation and older either find comfort in doing all these tasks or are burdened by having spent so many years on the same things. My reaction that is negative however is that I am ready to let some of these things go, not need to do it all myself, and then I feel the strong judgment. It taps into the feeling that as a woman I need to earn a living, have a career not a job, raise great kids, keep my fridge clean, cook healthy meals, take care of all the paperwork to support everything, and continually prove myself to avoid judgment.

So kib maybe you and I both need to find our middle chill point and learn a little from the other side. I actually am relaxing just talking about it, and remember, we don't have to do ANY of this if we don't want to so it is just paying a lot of attention to other people's choices.

[Zoe Girl]

can be[/I] a source of pride and progress and satisfaction and peace of mind, that in fact it can be the first and main source of it, that in fact I CUSTOM DESIGNED MY FREAKING LIFE TO BE ABOUT GETTING SATISFACTION FROM LIFE ADMIN ... I'm absolutely rabid about not giving away the opportunity. I suppose that conviction is living in the past ...

or maybe the future ...

so hmm, it may be that with others appearing to put little value on doing these tasks themselves when you feel great pride and satisfaction in them is difficult. I can understand that, when we make choices in our lives like this instead of just falling into a popular lifestyle then it is pretty often that we are affected. I would love to say that I am not affected when I am in a similar position but I very much am.


I have the rabid feelings too, I rabidly feel that just because I am female and gave birth does not mean I am in charge of cooking every meal or washing every dish (or managing someone to wash the dishes). 2 out of 3 of my kids love to cook and are great at it, the other can do it when she needs to but has a boyfriend who is an excellent cook. And we all suck at dishes.

[kib]

Yes Zoe Girl, absolutely yes. My "Joy of Admin" was all about choices, including plenty of choices not to do things and control over what I decided was important or not. I once had a flourishing crazy garden and someone gave me five dozen eggs, long story, so I didn't go grocery shopping for nearly a month and lived on omlets and salad. Why the hell not! I thought that was an excellent way to live - um, the ability to choose, not the diet - and I guess in this thread I'm wishing that sort of confidence and security on other people. To me, saying you'll pay someone else rather than re-examine how you want to live is like agreeing to give up your right to design your own life, and I think so many people don't know how empowering and FUN it can be to design your own life, even if there's a little bit of ick left.

I basically feel a lot of the same pressures you do, and they make me nuts, but my imagined solution is to go back to a place where I had boundaries that kept the pressure at bay, rather than giving away my old source of personal strength (and even paying for the privilege!) I would like to be appreciated for all this extra work, but mostly I would just like to regain the ability to make streamlined personally designed non-traditional choices. I'm not quite sure how I got here to this place of yes-dear leave-it-on-my-desk I'll-put-it-on-my-calendar that's-ok right-away-dear I'll-have-dinner-ready-in-a-jiff-what-would-you-like-oh-bacon-and-Little-Debbies-sure-dear, but I don't like it, I don't like me as this woman living a classic American life out of some suburban primer from 1960. At this point I'm Jane Wyatt AND Robert Young, and it's actively not enjoyable.

All by way of saying I think we might actually be on the same page, but I've been lucky enough to have had a different past experience that has shown me an option other than paying away the gray, and I wish other people knew it too. I realize this is a different ballgame if you have kids, but as adults, we should have the privilege of orchestrating our own basics to fit our own needs and skills and desires.

-- thank you, that was a really interesting way of looking at the other side of the coin! And I agree, it just lowered my blood pressure about 20 points.

[LDAHL]

To me, saying you'll pay someone else rather than re-examine how you want to live is like agreeing to give up your right to design your own life, and I think so many people don't know how empowering and FUN it can be to design your own life, even if there's a little bit of ick left.

I question your premise that outsourcing basic tasks is in some way inimical to re-examining your life. Everyone needs to decide how best to deploy their limited resources, particularly time, and we are all more or less continuously 'designing our lives" with every mundane choice. If I find gardening tedious, it makes sense eat purchased carrots. If paying a kid to mow my lawn (or letting it get a little longer) allows me to spend one of the limited summer afternoons I'm allotted at Wrigley Field, the rational choice seems obvious.

[jp1]

I can certainly understand kib's thought that it would be better for everyone if the tired overworked people managed to change society so that no one was iverworked, the same way it would be better overall if some underpaid worker at walmart worked to get a union in place that could negotiate for better wages for all. But people have been trying that for years so i dont blme that walmart employee for taking the easier route of applying for a job at costco or some other employer that might actually treat them decently. Someone who does t have the time or energy for life admin is also not likely to have the time or energy to try and change the world.

[kib]

Not the whole world! Lol. All I want to change, all I'm advocating trying to change, is one's own world. You find having 50 bills so complicated you need someone to manage them, maybe it's time to cut cable. You find cooking a meal for yourself so odious you want to scream, maybe it's time to find a new recipe book. You find making your bed such a tiresome prospect you want to crawl back into it, get a duvet ... or just decide making the bed really doesn't matter.

I understand, a lot of times the problem is not the actual tasks but the tasks on top of everything else - job, studies, transporting yourself from place to place, friends and meetings and Issues and childcare and focusing on your ouvre and so on. The easiest place to cut complication and irritation is at the bottom with all the stupidwork anyone could do. But I think mindfulness about what you've taken on in toto is a better first step. YMMV - and clearly does.

(And I will concede, some of this is a soapbox issue for me - there's a lot of damage being done that would just go away if we'd look at our assumptions: Must Have Lawn. Don't have time for lawn or enjoy lawn care, must have gardener, now have new bill and scheduling issues, must stress over cost of this and then must hire someone to do scheduling and billing and field complaints about leaf blower noise and stress over paying them as well. Must get second job. Must get car because that much bus travel is over the top. Must work extra hours at second job to pay for car. Ayup. Or plant ivy and get on with your life.)

[ApatheticNoMore]

I can certainly understand kib's thought that it would be better for everyone if the tired overworked people managed to change society so that no one was overworked, the same way it would be better overall if some underpaid worker at walmart worked to get a union in place that could negotiate for better wages for all. But people have been trying that for years so i dont blme that walmart employee for taking the easier route of applying for a job at costco or some other employer that might actually treat them decently. Someone who does t have the time or energy for life admin is also not likely to have the time or energy to try and change the world.

+1000

but of course all that one should be doing for the world is part of one's life admin nonsense that's floating on in one's head driving nuts, until one is kind of: screw it. Sometimes the congress person won't get called, some things I probably should be involved with I won't be ... etc. etc.

And yes my mom scheduled the appointment and drove me to my last dental appointment (it had been a year and a half). Talk about life admin. She doesn't' even mind, so why should anyone else?

Must get car because that much bus travel is over the top. Must work extra hours at second job to pay for car. Ayup. Or plant ivy and get on with your life.)

I think it works more like: must take public transit, public transit takes hours, must move close to work, must hire movers, must pack, must cancel and reschedule everything. A couple years down the line, not at same job, must move again to be close to work, must hire movers etc.. People have cars mostly because they are much less headache, not that they are good.

I don't have a lawn, but the landlord didn't water the roses all last summer (yes you would think it being their property ... ) and I was kind of overwhelmed by everything as I say and several died until I finally noticed and started watering. And I was to myself like: "gah, don't you notice anything?" It felt like another thing I was too overwhelmed to even notice.

[Zoe Girl]

I guess my perspective is moving more backwards. I was definitely the do everything myself person, I say I was a crunchy granola mom. Now I am more than ready to do the next stage of my life and there are not jobs that fulfill some of my goals that are also really manageable. I have so much I want to do (job, mediation side work, upcycle sewing). I stay pretty simple but if someone else wants to work longer hours and have someone mow the lawn it does not affect my life. When my mom ran a senior daycare and put in long hours she hired a housekeeper. Long term as a single person who has spent years as the caregiver it is unwise for me to take a cut in pay and responsibility and have that impact on retirement accounts. I already put tremendous effort into doing it myself and 10 years after my divorce I still have deep impact on my earning and career potential. If I had known this I would have put more career effort in and paid for a few more services.

I would say that my organization has many lower paid workers, we pay a decent hourly wage but it is part time after school, some before school shifts. So many of our staff take the bus. Other than some general consideration of area of the city we do not go very far to accommodate public transportation. All 3 of my kids have had difficulty with entry level jobs or school and public transportation. Public schools here use the regular city buses. We ended up getting cars whenever possible or arranging rides. My oldest works late and so there are not buses then (and the safety of taking a bus at 3 am)( I am sure there is someone who thinks she could take a bus at 3 am, so please respect that we are not comfortable with that). So I have many many times woken up and picked her up at 3 am, now she has a car and a loan but since her siblings and I had been supporting that for a couple years on and off that affects the whole family. That is reality of working in many cases.

Other than that when I get feeling intense about this I think about what is triggering it, do I feel somehow not valued, do I need to see if this actually impacts my life, do I need to adjust something that is out of balance.

[kib]

ANM, I kinda think the roses illustrates my point!

1. The landlord owns a building with roses, so it's her responsibility to ensure their care, or hire it out. Their care is her life admin.

2. She gets overwhelmed and doesn't do it.

3. This is apparently a tacit signal for you to take over her life admin, in a sense she's hiring it out. You don't do it, it appears from what you've said you didn't know it needed doing until it was too late.

4. The roses die and no one feels good about it.

Now you could argue that if she'd just Really hired out this admin task, if she'd gotten a gardener or had a formal arrangement with you, this wouldn't have happened.

I would argue that if she'd looked at the assumption that roses were practical and decided to fix the issue and just planted a no-maintenance natural landscape, there would be no issue of dead roses at all, and no admin headache for anyone.

ETA ... sigh. I really need to stop doing this. ETA: I am not judging. I don't care if your mother takes you to the dentist. I don't care if someone wants to work longer hours to buy a car. What I am suggesting is that a lot of the things we take on, or hire away, or stress out about, aren't necessary or beneficial to our lives in the first place, and that we might consider whether they have a place before we complicate our lives accomodating them.