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Along with bringing us interviews all year, Renee Liang has been busy with her arts career, while running around NZ and Australia as a locum doctor towing her (growing) family.  So for her final blog this year, Renee shares how she juggles the arts with parenting.

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Although I’ve done plenty of interviews with my fellow makers and creators, I haven’t written much about what I’ve been up to this year.  Nope, I haven’t been sitting on my butt... though sometimes I wish I could!

Among other things, I’ve run a series of writing workshops, workshopped a new theatre work, directed a remount of a play and taught some classes in playwriting.  Oh, and I wrote a couple of new plays, too. I’ve also been out and about soaking up as much arts, especially theatre, as I can.  It was a good start to the year with the Auckland Arts Festival blurring into the Auckland Fringe, and from there the treasures just continued.

All in all, I’m pretty happy at what I managed considering I was also running around NZ and Australia in my day job as a locum doctor, towing my growing family with me.  That’s literally growing.  The baby I had in mid 2012 is now an opinionated toddler, climbing into our bed to demand ‘Up!’, hours before the alarm is due to go off. (I know. Setting an alarm? What was I thinking?)  I also have an impressive bump/waddle, due to become no. 2 in a few months’ time.

So I thought I’d devote the rest of this blog to the topic of pairing an arts career with parenting. A while back, when said baby was 5 weeks old and I was still swimming through a milky haze, I asked some of the other mums on a Facebook group I belong to how they juggled work with motherhood. 

Work, especially in the arts where so much is self-driven, becomes even harder when a baby arrives. From the huge number of replies I had, the same things kept coming up: a change in working style, adjusting to short bursts of creativity; foggy minds (also known as placenta brain or milk amnesia); having less time to incubate; being crammed out of spaces by the new arrival (studios/studies are deemed less important than nurseries, or storage space for all the extra gear), and just pure fatigue. Happily, some mums also experienced a burst of creativity.  Some were even pushed into trying a new art form that they then discovered they were good at, resulting in a business or publication. (I wrote my first poem for young children and this was accepted for an anthology).

Personally, I’ve also found there’s a lot of guilt. From the early days when we’re told to nap when the baby naps (instead of use that precious half hour to write a poem); to when that baby grows into a toddler (shouldn’t I be playing with her instead of staring at my laptop?).  And when the baby is finally in bed there’s the choice of bonding with the partner versus finishing by the deadline.  Or in my case, using Facebook to ‘stay awake long enough to write’, then realising it’s long past my bedtime and partner has long since passed out. GUILT.

What did I do?  In retrospect, the advice the other mummies gave was sage.  Slow down. Don’t set such high expectations of yourself. Avoid stressing out. So, while I have continued to ask my creative partners and mentors to set me deadlines, I haven’t been as hard on myself when I miss them.  I’ve also left myself a lot more time to develop new work, and tried to be honest about what I can achieve.

I’ve given myself permission to lean on others.  My husband is the stay at home parent and has been wonderful whenever I’ve apologetically asked for yet another ‘night off’ to go to a play or reading.  (I try to limit this to one per week, so some hard choices still need to be made.)  When we’re home in Auckland, the extended family offer free food and best of all free babysitting, and we say yes to it all. The baby used to come with me to meetings and rehearsals, but now she’s far too much of an explorer, so she gets parked with someone more entertaining while I zoom off.

The brain fog has also slowly lifted and I’ve enjoyed more creative energy lately, though I’m bracing myself for the blur to return as the third trimester takes hold.  So maybe – just maybe – next year, I’ll have the time and brainspace to write a little more. Increments is okay.  I’m sure I’ll continue to be inspired by those around me who juggle not only family and career, but manage to pull off a project they’re passionate about.

I’m keen to keep thinking, writing and interviewing about juggling the arts and parenthood – so watch this space and send me your comments.