Any parent knows that you can’t go straight from doing-stuff to sleep; your brain needs some veg-out stuff to just process things. (I mean, I can sleep, but something unpleasant builds up if you don’t let decompression happen)

By the time I’ve left work, done grocery shopping, made dinner, cleaned up after dinner, done laundry etc, it’s already late, and I’ve had no me-time to just decompress. (especially when chores drag out longer the more tired I get…)

And apart from that, there’s a mixture of FOMO, resentment and just clawing-for-agency that makes me rebel against the only boundary I can shift, even though I’m the one that suffers for it.