Issue # 11

ambition, meet reality

Before I became a mom, I thought I could do it all.

Not in a cliche girlboss, hustle kind of way. Just in a me kind of way.

I thought I could be a present, gentle parent. Work part time. Build a side hustle. Keep the house running. Eat mostly healthy. Move my body again. See people sometimes. Sleep enough. Give myself some me-time. Give my partner some us-time. Give my family time.

When I write it out like that, it’s almost funny. I can see how impossible that is. But damn it, I thought I could.

And the truth is, sometimes I still think I should.

It’s hard to let go of ambition, even temporarily. It’s hard to say, “Not now,” when your brain still sparks with ideas, when your fingers still itch to build something, when you still recognize opportunity even if you don’t have the capacity to reach for it.

People keep saying this season is short. That it’s a blip in the grand scheme.

And I believe them.

But that doesn’t silence the sound of the clock ticking. The part of me that wonders what I’m missing, what I’m falling behind on, what could have been if I just had a little more time, a little more help, a little more energy.

Ambition hasn’t left me. But it’s bumping up against limits I never used to have. Not just time, but bandwidth. Not just energy, but emotional availability. Not just hours in the day, but the version of me that used to show up so sharply in those hours.

And so I’m learning, slowly, and not always gracefully, that I can still be ambitious. Just differently.

That this isn’t failure. It’s constraint. And constraint, while frustrating, can also be clarifying, if you let it.

I still want to do so much. And one day, maybe I will.

But for now, I’m trying to stop measuring myself against the version of me who didn’t have a baby on her hip, or a brain split in five directions, or a body that hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in months.

Right now, the ambition is still here. But the expression of it is quieter. Softer. Maybe even smarter? Different, anyway.

I’m not giving up. I’m just giving myself a little more time. Maybe you should, too.

a little bit of progress

This week, I finally fixed a bug in my free Super List plugin. It had been broken for a bit, and I’d been trying to make time to fix it for over a week. Every day, something else needed me more: my kid, my job, my body, my rest, my migraines.

But today, I got to it. Not because I magically found the time. But because I chose to give it what little I had.

And it felt good to follow through on something I care about.

Even if it’s slower. Even if it takes more tries. Even if it doesn’t happen in the rhythm I once knew.

Progress is progress, you know?

Till next week,

Aurooba