Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

But Sloane knew she was terrible at keeping up with mental reminders. Her life was empty water bottles rolling around on the floorboards of her expensive car. Unopened mail on kitchen countertops. Thank you cards written but never sent. In the back of her mind, she was already moving on, adding this mental reminder to the detritus of unfinished tasks to be recycled into background stress, where it would serve as fuel for her spotty and unexplained bouts of insomnia, chin acne, and stomach bloating.

Author Nora Roberts once spoke about juggling work and home life. I’m paraphrasing, but she said that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and others glass, you just have to know which are which because some balls will drop and that’s okay…as long as they aren’t the glass ones. That’s how I feel about Sloane’s water bottles and unsent thank you notes. Those are her plastic balls. Like a lot of women, myself included, the reason she’s able to balance work, motherhood, and friendships is because she lets some things fall through the cracks. She fails. She has to accept that she will never be on top of everything. But there’s a price to pay in the form of a constant thrum of stress that runs underneath her life. I relate to this so strongly.