I think often about Failed at it Friday, a commitment I made earlier on in the year to regularly share losses. I thought it would be good to honor failures alongside the lessons learned from them and to balance out talk of wins in an era where online life often hides failures or overexaggerates the emotionality behind them with a sense of false, Instagram-appropriate vulnerability.

I think of it often primarily because I went about six weeks getting pummeled by a series of unfortunate events. I wanted to share but couldn’t wrap my head around the entirety of the situation and how seemingly isolated occurrences intermingled in such a way that culminated into a real clusterfuck, to be frank. I also think of it often because of the alliteration and, if you didn’t notice, Fridays happen every.seven.days.. They’re a heinously busy time of the week, a time between Thursday, when I can think: “Hm. Friday. I wonder if I’ll get a pocket of time to get out what I’ve been thinking about that whole clusterfuck.” and Saturday, when I hurriedly go from task to task without the structure of a weekday and I think: “Missed that Friday thing again, huh. Maybe next week.”

So, here we are, this beautiful, freshly Summer Sunday, prior to an art walk and a memorial day BBQ, writing the first paragraphs of a “Friday” post. Maybe it’ll be published before next Friday, maybe not.

we’re not talking about those six weeks, though

I don’t wanna.

We’re talking about two days ago–Friday. My most recent failed at it.

first, the success

Friday was my youngest child’s preschool graduation. There’s success in that: another child managed to survive my parenting for over four years. This time I did it with nearly no support from extended family–save for a few days-long visits wherein I had to host said family members as houseguests. The company is well worth it and thoroughly enjoyed, but whether or not the preparation for and additional responsibilities of hosting culminates as a net positive is debatable.

My last Failed it Friday discussed three separate failures, all of which came down to a lack of planning. But isn’t that the case for all failures? Failure to plan is a plan to fail, so they say. This case is no different. Throughout this year, I’ve been well aware of the impending life change of my youngest heading off to kindergarten. Daily, I reach 2 p.m. exhausted by the unrelenting energy of my preschooler, looking back longingly at last year when there was a nap to break up the day. Yet I’ve had many conversations on the playground with other moms and my therapist over zoom alike about how things would be vastly different soon, and I’m cherishing the time despite the tiredness.

the failure that followed

I thought of these big, impending changes in a positive light: I’ll have more childcare, a chance to commit more time to my art, more time to commit to the plethora of projects and ideas I’ve put off, more patience during the moments when I’m parenting due to the appropriate rest I’ll have received. I thought about kindergarten as being a milestone for my son and about how big he would be.

Yet it came to a big surprise to me, when it struck me on Friday just what kindergarten really meant for me. A complete rug-out-from-under-me change in my schedule and lifestyle. Gone are the days of visiting regularly with the preschool moms who I’ve been friends with for the last one, two, three years. Would we see each other again, now that our children are going to different schools? Gone are biweekly library visits, where the children’s librarian looks over her glasses at us and smiles at us, afternoon sun gleaming between her brunette curls, greeting us by name. If the school bus is picking up my child earlier than we’ve been scheduling our mornings, how will that effect the morning routine I’ve evolved since that post and mastered? I guess since he’ll be on the bus I won’t need to have everything done–but does that mean I won’t be having fun getting dressed like Fran the Nanny anymore?

Whether or not I’ll continue to go to my well-loved gym is even up in the air, as the quality of the workouts have diminished, the trainer that inspired me rarely trains, and my brief stint in working there opened my eyes to the mean-spiritedness of an employee that I can’t unsee–distracting me from my feel-good time, my me time, my improvement as an athlete.

Are all my favorite things coming to an end?

That’s certainly the way I felt, that beautiful Friday afternoon, tethered to the shoreline by my inquisitive, water-loving four year old, as other parents socialized 100 feet away, carefully holding plastic cups filled with white wine, pepperoni grease still coating their fingers.

I hadn’t taken a moment to think of the mourning I’d do for the end of an era: my last baby, far from babyhood. Another life stage far behind me, and I’m vastly underprepared for the sentimental longing it would induce.

A week later

Now that I’ve gotten the chance to sit down and wrap up this post and some of the feelings around the topic have settled, I’ve since been reminded, by my husband, how much I love change. I always have. It’s the in-between feelings I grapple with, like when I grappled with moving or settling in to my town, which I now love.

I’m also reminded of when my youngest son was in infancy: I was new to my gym community, regularly doing activities with my baby, and fully involved in two weekly playgroups with a total of twenty other baby mamas. My daily journaling habit got repetitive enough that I scribbled one day in my pleather-bound: “I’m not going to talk about how great things are anymore. I’ve said that enough, I’ll write about other things that have been peaking my curiosity.” You know what happened several months later? Covid happened. I was a lucky one who survived, when not everyone I knew did. In 2021, when a friend was talking about a networking event, I confidently told her I was more concerned with tending to the friendships that I had–then promptly lost them a few weeks later. And I was okay, then, too.

Such is life

It ebbs, it flows. Some friends are forever, some share mutual interests and goals that last for that season. Last weekend, after beginning this writing, I spent the day at the Westport Art Festival, speaking to local and travelling artists alike about their professional lives–seeing a lifestyle that could potentially be my own. Following that, a barbeque with our “camping friends” we see once a year, full of titillating conversations with their friends who I met that day.

I don’t want to solemnly mourn the loss of this stage of my life. I want to celebrate it–like Dios de los Muertos–pouring some out over the grave.

It’s been a good one. Onward and upward.