# Chapter 230

The different hats we wear. This complexifies all of our lives. The reason this is so, is because they pull in different directions and they have different goals and objectives. My “take care of dad” hat requires me to be in Georgia for weeks at a time, and to make daily phone calls. And before you scoff at that sentence and hat, who among you have talked to or been with your parental every day for the last 1500 plus days??? Apologies for being punchy, but elder care is exhausting business. Back to hats.

That “take care of dad hat” creates so many pressures that my “work” hat gets trampled. That means that I never feel like this hat receives the energy and focus that it needs and deserves. I also never can finish this hat and it most often feels like “take care of dad” hat is the reason why. And then my “take care of wife” hat can lose ground because of the pressures of the other two hats. And my “take care of wife” hat can be very complicated because it involves multiple languages, countries and currencies.

Then there is the “take care of the house” hat and that is super intense and complicated because we just bought this house and it has many needs after years of neglect. Then there is the “kids and grandkids” hat and this one feels the most urgent of all, and many days more exhausting than the “take care of dad” hat. Kids struggling with gargantuan challenges, new fresh grand babies on the way, foster kids, the whole nine yards.

You wear a similar number of hats that require constant triage and management. We need top notch systems to do this well and take care of ourselves in the process.