I had to bite my tongue to stop complaining. Here I was, finally an officially published anthology editor, recording my own audiobook (!!!) and yet all I could do was stress about it. When would I find the time to record 10-plus hours of audio?! How would I get this done?
Since starting my podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books in 2018, I’ve become even more conscious of how I spend my time. As my little media empire has grown from one podcast once a week to three podcasts, one of which is a daily release, and a new Medium publication plus book deals for five books, I’ve had to adapt how I allocate my time. I’m hyper-conscious of what I’m doing.
Is it taking me too long to design a Canva skyscraper ad by myself? How long can I really spend on the background photo? But I want it to be perfect! I have a really hard time delegating things. It’s faster and easier, sometimes, to learn a new skill — like graphic design — than to try to put into words what I want in my mind. This, of course, will soon hamstring my growth, but I’ve learned how to do many things very quickly. I’ve started reading faster, typing faster, cutting corners on things I used to waste time doing (the perfect photo of my daughter for the school’s health website?!) and categorizing constantly.
A TIME-CONSUMING PROCESS
Recording an audiobook is one thing, though, that can’t be rushed. I had to read each of the 60-plus essays by bestselling and notable authors who contributed to my first anthology, Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology. I had to make sure I didn’t read too quickly, that I pronounced every word perfectly, even rerecording when I stumbled on my words. Corners were not cuttable.
It reminded me of when I used to pump breastmilk for 10 minutes. I remember a wedding I went to when my twins were just three weeks old. (I still can’t believe I managed to get there). I took my pump into the unisex bathroom “trailer” and, with drunken business school classmates pounding on the doors, I tried to make that time go faster but, of course, I couldn’t. Ten minutes was ten minutes. I couldn’t rush it or do it faster or better. It just was.
So it was with the audiobook. Due to the pandemic, I was asked to record it at home given that I had a full microphone and recording setup. I think, in retrospect, it would’ve been better to go somewhere, allocate the time in my calendar, and just do it. But instead, it fell into the bucket of the eight million other things I had to get done during the workweek. I moved around the house to quiet spots, avoiding where my four kids happened to be hanging out at those moments, and pressed record.
Once I learned the complex uploading, naming and exporting instructions, I could finally relax and listen to the words as I read them.
Some of the essays I hadn’t reread in almost a year since they were first submitted to what used to be an online pandemic publication called We Found Time. All the essays had been edited by podcast guests and authors Claire Gibson, Elissa Altman and Carolyn Murnick. And here they were. One after another. Some were about the pandemic, but most were about life in general. Parenting.
NOTHING SHORT OF EMOTIONAL
I cried reading Janice Kaplan’s essay on traveling to Japan with her grown son and turning over the reins to him. I felt a sense of loss and longing reading John Kenney’s poem about the death of his mother. I was inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s essay on the concrete benefits of reading. Allison Cayne’s essay on family dinners made me want to sit everyone down straight away. All the pieces hit a nerve, an emotion, an open sensor inside me, making me feel deeply and reflect on how I can relate.
As I read, even during the choppy moments of found time, I grew increasingly emotional. How great were these essays?! And I had played a big role in commissioning and curating them. I felt enormous satisfaction.
It took weeks. It took longer than it should have. I had to re-record many parts. I cursed and sighed and complained about it — that is, until my husband told me I sounded like a famous actress complaining about an early call time. Noted.
Then, finally, it was done. The revisions were in. The essays were brought to life, infused by my own feelings about them.
When the producer finally accepted my final product, I exhaled.
“I’m never doing that again,” I said to my husband.
And yet.
As my audiobook launches, I feel overwhelmed with pride, my voice stamped all over the essays by so many esteemed contributors, my words mixing with theirs, my voice channeling their thoughts like a medieval magic trick. Even my own essays took on new meaning when read aloud and shared. By doing so, I tapped into the universal pastime of oral storytelling that’s been going on since the beginning of time, telling each other our stories, sharing with our voices.
MAKING TIME AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE
There’s not a lot we can claim as solely our own these days, especially as mothers. In the midst of a bite of something delicious, one of the kids always asks me for some. My bed at night regularly is shared, not just by my husband but with a revolving door of children each taking turns burrowing between us, often unnoticed until the morning. The fridge? Forget it. My home? Overrun.
But my voice? That is something that can’t be given away. The best I can do with it is use it as a tool to whip select thoughts and feelings across cyberspace, a hammer to pound in the nails of experience. It’s all mine.
Moms don’t have time to record audiobooks and yet, doing so improved my life, made me think and feel, and probably made me a better mother when I closed the laptop, stood up, and went back to the craziness of daily life on the other side of the closed door.
That’s why we do all of it, isn’t it? Read. Write. Tell stories. It’s to connect. To think and feel. And to re-enter the world we live in just a little bit better than how we left it.
So for my next book, sign me up. Turns out, it was worth all that time.
Perhaps things that can’t be rushed are the most worthwhile of all.
At least, that’s what I heard.
