Saturday, November 01, 2008

Mental Exhaustion

Has anyone else experienced this? Not just physical exhaustion but the mental tiredness with it? The one thing that I had never thought of in parenting was answering a thousand questions a day. And I don't mean the little kid asking "why" every five seconds although that does happen. I mean the question after question of "can I play this?" "can I do that?" And then I have to pause and think. I don't know, should they do this now?

The thing is my discipline technique is whatever my answer is stays my answer. No begging or pleading for a new answer. Yes is yes. No is no. This is great, in theory. Until my head aches from the whole thought of answering just one more question!

It doesn't help that I have 3 one year olds (almost 2!!) begging me for things to. Since Julianna is talking a lot she is constantly asking me for things in understandble English. "watch Hi-5" "eat cereal" "want juice" and the list goes on. Rachel throws herself on the floor and cries if she doesn't get what she's asking for though her words aren't as understandable. Alyssa is still in the "uh-uh" stage and has no words.

Just wears on my brain and my body.

So, what do I do? Find even more ways to mentally exhaust myself! Like getting up at 6 AM on a Saturday morning and heading out to another writing conference - this one was more like a workshop though but it's another kick in the pants to get my tail in gear and do more writing. Which involves, well, my brain!

And to further make myself crazy, my new writing friend, Terri, has roped me in to writing a novel this month. Yep, a totally new novel. Because apparantly November is National Novel Writing month. Who knew there was such a thing? Yea, me either till about 2 days ago. But the deal is you write 50,000 words in one month. No real editing involved - you just write it and hopefully end up with some form of novel at the end of it. Apparantly about 100,000 people around the world are doing this. Last year only 15,000 people completed the task. Gee, I wonder why?

Because I'm too mentally exhausted to know better I've signed up :) Will I finish? I don't know. But us moms of triplets seem to be extreme overachievers anyway like my blogger friend, Amy, who runs marathons - she also has 2 kids and triplets.

So, wish me the best and bug me if you want. We'll see if I have anything worth anything at the end of this month! You can see how well I'm starting out - I'm blogging here instead of writing. But I did spend all day learning about writing - doesn't that count?!

And oh yea, I have 4 birthdays to get ready for this month. Just add it to my list.

4 comments:

Misty said...

I'm now mentally exhausted! Good luck with all of that! I'm right there with you with all the new talking and demands and protests!

Cadi + 4 said...

We can't wait until they can talk and then all we want is for them to be quiet. I guess the words are usually better than just screaming, right? Sometimes.

I think not only having to answer questions, which IS draining, but I suffer from what I call noise fatigue. By the end of the day, I just want to put on our big lawn mower headphones to block out every single sound.

Maybe you should write a novel about your kids. It would be work and therapy, both at the same time.

MaryBeth said...

Will you be blogging the Nov. novel? Just curious b/c I know I hung on every word last time and since you made that blog private at the end of the novel I don't get updates in my Bloglines reader anymore... Just need to know if I should be on the lookout or not over at Dorinda Writes.

Angie said...

Hang in there Dorinda! I have been wondering about your writing career...good luck with the new writing adventure.

I know what you mean about all the questons. Sometimes my three ask the same question one right after the other...ugh!