The Exhaustion of Beginning

Yesterday, on Twinkle’s first First Day of School, I made her lie down for a nap. I did this because by the time eleven o’clock rolled around, she was crying hysterically over being asked to sit and snuggle while we read out loud. She had already counted to ten and learned the letter A. It was too much for her world; it had pretty much blown her four year old mind.

(Last year, on our first day of homeschool co-op—where she literally had nothing to do but sit and play all morning—she came home and took a two hour bath to recover.)

On our trip last week, a young lady, on what was obviously her first day of work, laboriously checked our family into the hotel. She had an obvious deer-in-the-headlights look as the woman who was training her explained the steps in minutest detail.

It reminded me of myself, fifteen years ago, starting my first official job (I’m not sure teaching flute in high school really counts), and calling my sister on day two, panicked that I was never going to keep the number of espresso shots per drink in my mind and I’d be fired before I even got my first pay check.

All of these moments served to remind me of just how exhausting it is to start something new. It doesn’t matter if the new thing is small (like learning the first letter of the alphabet and its corresponding sound) or well-supervised (like being walked through all the steps with someone almost literally holding your hand) or seemingly unimportant (like learning how to make a decent cup of coffee): beginnings are exhausting.

This is why babies sleep all the time. Because everything is new. Even themselves.

If you find yourself in a season of new (like I often do), I have a few words of advice for you. {I am a qualified advice giver because I said so.}

First, take that nap. Go to bed early. Hit snooze. You. Are. Tired. And that is totally normal. The only way to get un-tired is to quit (which you probably don’t want to do) or to get a little more sleep.

Be smart: close your eyes and turn your brain off for a bit. Your To Do list will not run off on you while you take a brief break.

Second, give yourself some grace. Don’t beat yourself up for taking that nap. Don’t kick yourself over needing an extra cup of coffee. Don’t be surprised when maneuvering your way through a new grocery story (or reading a single letter A) is the only thing you find you have the bandwidth for. Again, this is totally normal.

Cut yourself some slack. If it helps, I will give you a fake statistic: 99.9% of all people take time to adjust when starting new things. So you are in good company. And the .1% that doesn’t are super annoying in their superiority, and we don’t like them anyway.

Third, give yourself a time frame during which you will not punch the “quit” button. All those years ago, when I called my sister in a panic because I was positive I could never remember how to froth milk and pull a shot of espresso, my sister wisely told me that I always did this during the first three days of anything new (“this” being “unnecessary panic”), whether it was a new class, a new school, or a new job. She told me to give it two weeks and see how I felt then.

And she was right. By two weeks, I may not have been the best barista ever seen, but I no longer felt like I was drowning.

Years later, I had an older mom tell me a similar thing about breast-feeding. She told me, if I hated it, just to tell myself I only had to stick it out for six weeks. If, at the end of six weeks I wanted to quit, I should do so, guiltlessly. I thought to myself, I can do anything for six weeks. And I did. And by the end of six weeks, the idea of buying formula and making bottles no longer sounded quite so appealing.

But here’s the thing: if it had sounded appealing, I would’ve guiltlessly thrown breast-feeding out the window. I’d given it a fair shot.

It helps to have the option of quitting—sometimes it actually keeps us from doing so. This morning, even though I felt like I’d been roadkill when I woke up, I dragged myself out for a run, telling myself I just had to move my body in a forward direction. With every mile, I told myself, just hang in there for eight more minutes. You can do anything for eight minutes.

I ran three miles. Nobody died. No records were won. I received zero standing ovations. But the exercise box got ticked (and exercise creates endorphins and you know what they say about those…).

So, all that to say, if you’re exhausted these days with something new, yeah, put the coffee on and give it your best shot, but also: take that nap, give yourself some grace, and pick a timeline that let’s you feel like you can quit at a reasonable time if you really need to.

I have a friend who, once, many weeks pregnant, set out to run a few miles with some friends, telling herself she could quit when those miles were done. Reader: she ended up running a marathon. We may not all be in that level of awesome but…we may also find that in our season of experiencing new (and exhausting) things, a little sleep, a sprinkling of grace, and an end goal can keep us moving far past what we ever thought capable of.