A friend of mine has recently started working as a personal assistant for another friend of mine and her family. This arrangement is, in my view, utterly delicious.
Reviewing columns from a few years ago, I noticed the words and phrases “hectic” and “to-do list” cropping up more often than not. When I seem to be slipping out of time to walk through the supermarket, rather than trot, there’s a problem – and it’s not me.
Four years ago, I told of how to save paper and the pain of lugging a diary around I stored most of life on my phone or in my head. As a result, I was (I wrote then, and still am now) a flapping spinning top of stress.
In the pursuit of wanting to be that woman who has it all, I’ve got too much.
Full-plate syndrome is not my personal problem – it seems to shadow all my mommy and working gal friends too.
I asked my mother if this was a chronically female thing and she reckons not. It’s the day and the age. She doesn’t remember feeling so frazzled; she turned out home-cooked meals nightly, ran several successful businesses and still had good nails.
I’ve had the conversation repeatedly with girlfriends and despite synched smart phones and technological advances which should save time and money, we’re still a gazillion miles from manic-free mornings.
We’ve got a range of war wounds to show for our eternal rat race: chipped nails, plastic smiles, short fuses and too many moments of “cheers, gotta run!” instead of “hey, can we catch up?”
I was in such a rush one morning to get the kids to school and me to my desk that I plopped toothpaste into my bra. I only discovered it when the then-toddler started scooping “icing” from inside my batwing top and saying I tasted nice.
If I’d had less to do than I did, I’d have laughed it off – but scrubbing that chalky stain off my boobs was five minutes I’d never get back.
Everybody, says Katharine Giovanni of the International Concierge and Lifestyle Management Association, is trying to squeeze 36 hours into a 24-hour day.And this is why smart girls are starting to realise that hiring a personal assistant to help get your life back perhaps isn’t the preserve of celebrities anymore.
A friend in Cape Town is transformed, thanks to Helene, her long-time PA. I couldn’t get my head around the idea that a work-from-home mom needed one.
She, however, is on-trend and outrageously organised so it was only a matter of time before I saw her point.
If a seven-figure salaried CEO can’t get by without a perky aide to take care of insurance claims, order flowers, remember anniversaries and answer the phone, why should I?
When I was single, childless and a corporate climber, I couldn’t have coped without Ursula, who managed our newsroom floor with the effortless grace of a cat.
We pretend that management is in charge, but Secretary’s Day was created to remind us of who really runs the show.
Now that I’m supposed to earn an income, keep track of two kids who lose shoes and memory blank over homework, and provide an endless stream of nutritious meals, it’s become insanely difficult to fit in the other stuff that modern life insists I do: tax returns, car services, perfectly-wrapped gifts, washing the dog, booking dental check-ups, relieving the car of festering apple cores and reminding my husband (again) that his traffic fine is dangerously close to jail time.
If I had a PA, she (or he) could do these things for me. I’d oversee an empire of efficiency and be a nicer person, too.
Behind every successful woman is another woman picking toothpaste off her top.