This thread encapsulates my mood this week in a lot of ways.

For the first six weeks or so, I felt like I was doing really well.

WFH had a novelty effect, and certain upsides, and that was good. https://twitter.com/PAG1962/status/1259925868866043910

Combining childcare and WFH went much better than I expected. That produced a bit of a self-satisfied 'superdad' glow. The 'crisis' dynamic meant there was an immediacy to the work, that had to 'get done.' I really felt like I was hugely effective and productive.

The bloom now feels off the rose. Charlie is less entertained by the TV, and I am less able to filter him out when he is you know, just being a wee guy. I feel crap ignoring a morning hug to finish a sentence. My concentration feels like it seeping through my ears.

This creates a guilt compound effect. Instead of feeling smug about combining work and childcare, I am feeling guilty about doing both badly.

I think this is oddly why that latest 'Owen Jones' stooshie has triggered a lot of people. It has that ugly grain of truth.

I feel genuinely lucky to be comfortable financially. I feel lucky to have a wonderful wee toddler whose joyful development is a living testament to the fact that our lives are not in fact temporally frozen.

This process must be so grim for financially precarious single twenty-somethings.

However, it is still hard trying to do childcare, work, housework and exercise each day.

I guess the point is that quality of life is not binary. Anxieity is not binary. They exist on a spectrum.

It is ok to find this difficult, even if others have it much harder than you.

One regrettable thing is that it feels like we are all starting to give each other, and ourselves, more of a hard time. This is a time of shortage, but if we try, we can try not to run out of the empathy and compassion that are the cornerstones of our way forward.