AJ Alanson, Author

I, like many of my people, wake in the morning and plan my day. While falling asleep at night, I size up all I’ve achieved—and all I didn’t. Sounds pleasant, positively Puritan, as though Ben Franklin should have a cute rhyme about it, like, “Raise your head, mind the chores. Close your eyes, judge your worth.”

This ritual is not so much a tradition in my upbringing as it is a law. That said, recently I have become aware of an evil undercurrent to this habit. On the surface, it seems like a lovely old adage, but underneath, this ritual of setting my potential value in the morning and taking stock of my worth each night can be deceptively corrosive.

What am I, a tube of toothpaste? Each day, I’m squeezed out from the bottom up until I’m, what, extruded? Hell, I’m not even the tube. At least it gets to be some magical vessel refilling each night. That I could respect (being magical and all), but no, I’ve just realized I’m the freaking toothpaste—how gooey and gross is that? What’s worse, I, myself, slide the little forked metal pin onto the bottom of the tube every morning by running inventory in my groggy mind.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I begin my day already behind. “What was left from yesterday?” I move on to the big items, “What HAS to get done today?” Making coffee, I start the first turn on the tube—as straight as possible, of course. We wouldn’t want to begin our precious extraction off-kilter, now would we?

With my first sip of coffee, I twist off the cap to release the building pressure and look around for breakfast. “What does everyone else need from me? What’s the bare minimum I need for myself, oh, and if there’s room left, what can I squeeze in?”

My day proceeds, turn after turn, rolling the tube from the bottom up. By nightfall, I’ve twisted, wrenched, and wrung out every last minty glob, but alas, as is the case with toothpaste, I never get it all. That’s how I know I’m the toothpaste. There’s some of me left to fight another day. It’s just a coincidence that the leftovers also feel like unfinished business. Am I and my responsibilities one and the same?

If you haven’t guessed, I grew up on a Midwest farm where husbandry never takes a day off. We don’t work in spite of the clock, punching in, punching out, taking vacations, and having a life outside of work. We ARE the clock, we ARE the work. Every day must review the past, execute the present, and plan the future or our whole time-world collapses.

I’m not talking gender roles, or weird family businesses, this is the reality of growing up where if you don’t work, you don’t eat, and this relationship isn’t confined to farming. It is the definition of a job versus a career: if you’re making money when you sleep, congratulations, you have a career. Otherwise, you don’t get to sleep. That’s the mentality of my routine. It’s thick, abrasive, and pasty, and it burns my mouth every day, but at least I have fresh breath.

To complete the cycle, as I’m dressing for bed, I end with “did I give it my all, what did I forget, what was left up in the air?” Contained inside each twenty-four hour period, I systematically set my potential in the morning, squeeze out my energy, and gauge my worth every night. What looks like the habit of a high-achiever on the outside has unintended, or perhaps, societally intended consequences.

But this is my big question: why is the tube’s absolute emptiness the measure of a good day? I get giving your all, leaving it on the mat, and doing your best, Go Team! But doesn’t it also seem as though my daily value as a wife, daughter, sister, mother, and friend increases only as I, Angela, approach zero, zilch, nothing? As though dividing by zero earns me infinity. What good is infinity? Can I eat it? Save it? Spend it? That’s some effed up math.

I’m not endeavoring to completely break this habit so ingrained that my mind begins its calculations before I’m even conscious in the morning. The daily inventory has, after all, served me well, but I no longer believe there is one approach. I’m thinking, from time to time, I’ll leave my whole handprint in the middle of the tube, just forget about the last bit of goop, and pitch a half-empty tube in the dustbin without looking back.

I might seem to be leaning toward the “all things in moderation” camp (which Ben Franklin did NOT say), but, nope, that’s boring. Rather, maybe each day is sufficient in its own uniqueness. In this world of skewed realities and acceptable fakery, embracing random acts of rebellion and forgiving the leftovers might just give back a tiny bit of our humanity. Day by day.

The photo comes from my sister’s garden. Another beautiful being giving her all, well, the bird and my sister (in that she grew up the same way I did). I’m finishing off the last edits to A Ghost in the Tide and working on the cover. Soon, my readers, soon. I, too, want to get to the finale of The Admiral Inn Series.