If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know my life operates on a very specific OS: Happy Pessimism. It’s that internal firmware that tells me, “Yes, the sun is shining today, but you’d better pack three umbrellas and a backup generator just in case.” In the world of IT, we call this “disaster recovery planning.” In the world of solo parenting, we call it “Tuesday.”
Lately, however, I’ve been dealing with a different kind of system error. It’s not a broken link or a server timeout. It’s the “nonsense thoughts.” You know the ones. They creep in at 2:00 AM when Xavy is finally asleep, the furbabies are snoring, and the blue light of my laptop is the only thing keeping the shadows at bay.
The question I want to tackle today is one we rarely talk about in the “curated” world of parenting blogs: How do you actually treat your nonsense thoughts? Do you debug them? Do you ignore the notification? Or do you let them run in the background until they crash your entire system?
The Anatomy of a Nonsense Thought
In the context of solo parenting, a “nonsense thought” isn’t just a random wonder about whether penguins have knees. It’s the intrusive, illogical, and often cruel narrative that plays on a loop when you’re exhausted.
It sounds like: “What if I’m raising him to be too sensitive?” or “What if my career peaks right here because I can’t put in the extra hours?” or the classic, “I’m one flat tire away from a total collapse.”
As a Happy Pessimist, my default setting is to treat these thoughts as logical predictions. I take a “nonsense” worry and try to build a fortress around it. But here’s the struggle: you cannot build a fortress around a ghost.
1. The Trap of the “Mental Debugging”
Because I work in IT, my instinct is to troubleshoot. When a nonsense thought pops up—let’s say, the fear that I’m failing as a mother because we had cereal for dinner three nights in a row—I start “debugging.”
- Input: Cereal for dinner.
- Error: Bad parenting.
- Solution: Must cook a five-course organic meal tomorrow while simultaneously finishing a freelance project and cleaning the bathroom.
This is where the struggle of solo parenting hits the hardest. When you are the only “admin” on the account, there is no one to tell you that the code isn’t actually broken. There’s no partner to laugh and say, “Hey, the kid loves Froot Loops, relax.” Instead, the nonsense thought stays in the cache, slowing down your processing speed for the things that actually matter.
2. Treating Thoughts as “Background Processes”
Over the years, I’ve learned that you can’t always “Close Program” on a nonsense thought. Some thoughts are like those stubborn Windows updates that happen at the worst possible time. You can’t stop them; you can only wait them out.
For a solo mom, treating nonsense thoughts as background processes means acknowledging they are there without giving them “Administrative Privileges.”
I tell myself: “Okay, the thought ‘I am alone and will always be alone’ is currently running. It’s taking up 15% of my CPU. I see it. But I still have to finish this Australian Visa guide for my readers.” By labeling the thought as “nonsense” rather than “truth,” I strip it of its power to trigger a full system shutdown.
The Solo Parent’s Burden: The “What-If” Loop
In my post about Flying Solo with Murphy’s Law, I mentioned that being prepared is my superpower. But the dark side of that superpower is the “What-If” loop.
Nonsense thoughts thrive in the gap between our current reality and our imagined catastrophes. As a solo parent, that gap is huge because the safety net feels thin.
- What if I get sick?
- What if the freelance market dries up?
- What if Xavy resents the time I spend staring at this screen?
Usually, I treat these thoughts by Documenting the Worst Case. I am a big believer in the power of the “Brain Dump.” If a nonsense thought is loud enough to keep me from sleeping, I open a Google Doc or my physical journal and I write it down.
There is something about seeing the words “I am afraid I am a mediocre human” written in 12pt Calibri font that makes it look… well, ridiculous. It’s much easier to delete a line of text than it is to delete a feeling.
The Personality Factor: Why “Happy Pessimism” is Actually a Shield
People often ask me why I call myself a pessimist if I’m generally a “happy” person. It’s because expecting the nonsense allows me to handle it when it arrives.
If I expected life to be a “rainbows and unicorns” CDrama, every nonsense thought would feel like a personal failure. But because I expect the rain, I’m not surprised when my brain starts leak-testing the roof.
I treat my nonsense thoughts like Unsolicited Beta Testers. They point out the vulnerabilities in my life.
- Thought: “You’re not saving enough.”
- Action: I check my SSS Salary Loan status or update my Upwork profile.
- Result: The thought is “solved” by action.
The struggle is that as a solo parent, you are the CEO, the IT Support, and the Janitor. You don’t always have the “bandwidth” to turn every thought into an action. Sometimes, you just have to let the thought be nonsense.
A Message to My Fellow Solo Travellers
If you are reading this and you’re currently drowning in your own “What-Ifs,” I want you to remember something. Your brain is a complex piece of hardware. It’s trying to protect you. It’s throwing these “nonsense” thoughts at you because it wants you to be safe. It’s over-optimizing for survival.
But you are more than a survivalist. You are a mom, a creator, a professional, and a person who deserves peace.
How do I usually treat my nonsense thoughts? I treat them like a pop-up ad from 2004. I don’t click the link. I don’t buy what they’re selling. I just look for the little ‘X’ in the corner, click it, and get back to the real work of building a beautiful, messy, “happy-pessimistic” life with my son.
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