Why Do I Feel a Sudden Void When Working Remote and Solo Parenting During the Day? Is It Normal?
It’s 2:14 p.m. on Wednesday, my third back-to-back client call just ended, and I’m leaning back in my wobbly kitchen desk chair staring at a half-empty mug of lukewarm coffee. My 7-year-old Leo is perched at the other end of the table, 90 minutes deep into building a Lego Millennium Falcon, and hasn’t asked for a snack, a screen turn, or help opening a glue stick since I joined the first call at 12:30. The cat’s napping on the windowsill, the sun’s filtering through the faded sheer curtains, and suddenly there it is: this sharp, soft hollow right in the middle of my chest. Not sadness, not exhaustion, just… a void. Nothing feels wrong, exactly, but nothing feels quite right either. I stare at the Lego crumbs on my keyboard and think, what is wrong with me?
I texted my group chat of three other parents who work remote and solo parent on their partner’s work-from-office days, and within two minutes, three replies popped up. “I got that yesterday. Sat for 10 minutes just staring at the wall after my kid went down for quiet time.” “Happens every time my kid zones out with coloring for an hour. I thought I was just burnt out.” Only one hadn’t felt it, and she works outside the home two days a week. So that’s how I ended up asking my cousin, a school counselor who works with a lot of remote-working parents: Is this normal?
She didn’t tell me I was burnt out or needed a vacation right away. She asked me to walk her through what a typical solo remote day looks like for me. I told her: I’m toggling. I’m half listening to a work meeting while I watch Leo out of the corner of my eye to make sure he’s not mixing paint into the dog’s water. I’m answering a Slack message while I cut up apple slices for his snack. I’m problem-solving a work conflict while I negotiate with him about how many more minutes of screen time he gets before I need to hop on another call. Even when he’s perfectly occupied, my brain never fully switches to just work or just parenting. It’s stuck in this constant split, half-on state for 6 or 7 hours straight.
Ah, she said. That’s exactly why you feel the void. When your brain is stuck toggling between two full-time, high-demand roles all day in the same small space, it gets used to being pulled in two directions. When you suddenly get a gap—your meeting ends 15 minutes early, your kid is happily occupied for longer than expected, there’s no immediate demand from either work or parenting—your brain can’t figure out how to just be. It’s used to being pulled, so when the pull stops, it feels like an empty space instead of a break. That’s the void. It’s not that you don’t love being with your kid, or that you hate your job. It’s just your brain adjusting to a sudden stop after hours of constant movement. That’s totally normal.
I’d spent weeks thinking the void was a sign I was doing something wrong. I thought it meant I was ungrateful for getting to work from home and be with my kid, that I should be enjoying this time instead of feeling empty. But once I knew what it was, I started testing small, low-effort things to soften it, no fancy self-care retreats required.
The first thing that stuck was a 2-minute transition anchor. I made a rule for myself: any time I finish a block of meetings and have more than 5 minutes free before the next thing, I get up from my desk and walk to the sink to refill my water bottle. While I’m waiting for the water, I count three blue things I can see. It’s stupidly simple, but it gives my split brain a tiny, low-stakes task to land on instead of falling straight into that hollow feeling. Most days, that’s enough to keep the void from settling in.
Before that, I’d automatically grab my phone to answer emails or fold a load of laundry to fill every gap. I thought I was being productive, but that just kept my brain in that split toggle state, so the next gap felt even emptier. Now I keep a pack of mint gum on my desk, and if the gap is shorter than 5 minutes, I just chew a piece and stare at the bird feeder outside for one minute. No phone, no chores, just that one tiny thing to keep my brain occupied while it adjusts to the lull.
Another small change I made: I prepped a tiny bin of 1-minute activities I can grab when the void hits. It has a mini pack of playing cards for one quick game of solitaire, a packet of wildflower seeds I can sort by size and color, and a tiny notepad for writing down three grocery items I need to pick up after school. It’s nothing big, just something that gives my brain a gentle task that’s not work and not parenting, so it can ease out of the toggle state instead of dropping into nothing.
I still get the void every couple of Wednesdays. Last week, Leo finished his Falcon an hour earlier than I expected, my next meeting got pushed back 20 minutes, and there it was again, that soft hollow. I did my water refill, counted the blue magnets on the fridge, Leo’s blue dinosaur hoodie hanging over the back of the chair, and the blue plastic bird feeder outside, and it softened. It didn’t disappear completely, but it stopped feeling like a sign that something was wrong.
I haven’t figured out how to make it go away for good, and I don’t know that I need to. It’s just a side effect of doing two full jobs in the same 10 feet of kitchen space, every Wednesday. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad parent or a bad employee. It just means my brain’s been working overtime splitting itself in two, and it needs a minute to catch up. That’s all.
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