I’m 52, a stay-at-home dad, and my life revolves around caring for my nine-year-old autistic son, Jacob.

His social and communication skills are on par with those of a two-year-old, and he requires constant support—school transportation, feeding therapy, toilet training, speech therapy, and more.

My wife and I take turns sleeping beside him every other night to ensure he doesn’t wake up and disrupt everyone. On top of this, we manage our own health issues, aging parents, and the everyday stresses of life.

My body is starting to show the wear and tear of age and the physical and psychological demands of caregiving. Over the past few years, I’ve faced health challenges, including a precancerous skin condition and heart-related concerns. These have forced me to confront a harsh truth: if I don’t take care of myself, I won’t be able to care for anyone else.

But there’s more to taking care of yourself than just getting enough sleep – like … hopes, dreams, and such. How do we do (some) of that, when we have these heavy responsibilities. I’ll try to tell you what I do in my case … hopefully it can be of some use, if you are in a similar situation, or find yourself in it.

Self-Care starts with … the Basics

Again: As carers, we often neglect basic self-care. And it goes without saying that part of self-care needs to be taken care of first. Like, poor eating habits—relying on sugar, caffeine, or quick, unhealthy meals—become the norm. These choices might sustain us temporarily, but they take a toll, especially as we age. But like I said, while these habits are a form of self-care, they’re not enough. We need more.

Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” offers a useful framework here. At the base are the essentials: food, sleep, and rest.

As carers, we also need to address the middle layers—relationships, intimacy, and connection—which are often strained under the weight of caregiving. These are heavy topics, though, and something I want to put off for another discussion.

Today, I want to focus on the top of the pyramid: self-actualization.

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Self-Actualization is also Self-Care

Self-actualization is about doing something that is uniquely you—something that gives your life meaning beyond caregiving. It could be a career, a creative pursuit, a community project, or even a personal passion like studying Shakespeare or writing a book.

For me, it’s writing short stories – d’uh. It’s a part of my identity that I refuse to let go, even when it feels impossible.

The challenge, of course, is finding the time, space, and energy to pursue these passions. Traditional writing methods—long, uninterrupted hours in a quiet office—don’t fit into my life. So, I had to adapt.

Last year, I developed a method I call guerrilla writing. It involves dictating drafts during my commute—those hours a day spent taking Jacob to and from school (two hour getting him there and home, and two hours going home myself and back out to the school – the hours when I am alone on the commute are the ones I manage to use here).

I dictate and then use software like like Mistral (support EU digital sovereignty – yaaah!) to clean up the transcriptions, removing filler words and repetitions. This gives me a rough draft that I can refine later, during the brief windows of time when Jacob is occupied or resting.

This approach worked. In a short period in June, I wrote around 10 stories in 10 days—rough drafts, but they existed. That’s about 30,000 words. It was a stark contrast to the three months in early 2026 I spent trying to write in a traditional way (falling into that trap again!), producing only 5,000 words or thereabouts.

The traditional method left me frustrated and unproductive – I mean, trying to locate time to be alone, in an “office” (the 5 square meter room in our apartment set aside for a desk and a laptop) and have good energy and no distractions.

You know like one of my writing inspirations, Elizabeth Strout who has a nice office on the first floor of an old railway building IIRC, and who of course drafts in long hand, like another inspiration of mine – Andre Dubus III, who has a dedicated office in his four story house, and Stephen King who – well, you get the idea.

And that it is impossible for a carer, with little time, little energy (esp. a good sleep) and little space ( a cluttered 70 square meter apartment for two adults and a special needs child and 10 different mountains of laundry that also seem to share the seem address as us at any given time!).

Guerrilla writing, on the other hand, allowed me to reclaim a piece of my identity as a writer.

And that brings me neatly along to the “new stuff” in this post, which hopefully may come of use to you as well:

What has made it possible for me to carve out some “self-actualization” space – in this case with guerilla-writing (and editing)? Glad you asked …

Overcoming Fear of Judgement

Guerrilla writing required me to overcome several mental barriers. The first was embarrassment. Dictating stories into my phone in public felt awkward. Would people judge me? Turns out, no one cares.

In today’s world, people are used to seeing others talking into their phones, listening to podcasts, or even having loud conversations in public. No one bats an eye if you’re dictating a literary short story set in 1967.

There is a lot more to this point, but this post is already getting long, so I will leave it at that and move on to the next hurdle – which, I feel, is probably the biggest, all things considered …

Overcoming Discomfort

The second barrier was discomfort. I craved peace and quiet, a space free from external noise and stress. But I had to accept that such a space doesn’t exist in my current reality. The next best thing was learning to ignore the noise—to focus on the task at hand, even in less-than-ideal.

And it’s not just about external discomfort like writing when you’re in a public space with lots of noise. It’s actually more also about the psychological discomfort that you can feel when you’re stressed about all kinds of things and have low energy or when for example you have secondary responsibilities – basically our multitasking all day long.

‘So it’s about finding spaces in all that external and internal discomfort, where you can actually do something for yourself and not demand demanding purity.

Easier said than done …

Accepting Imperfection

And so we arrive at the third, and perhaps most significant, barrier in general: perfectionism. The writer’s bane!

I had to accept that my writing didn’t need to be perfect in the first draft—or even the second or third. The goal was to get words on the page, to create something raw that I could refine later.

Perfectionism is the enemy of productivity, especially for writers.

If I waited for the perfect conditions or the perfect draft, I’d never produce anything.

This was a hard lesson. And what is new for me today is just how other “excuses” conspire with the classic “writer perfectionism” to produce … nothing (not written words at any rate). You see, not only did I had to let go of the idea for good that I should write as well as my aforementioned inspirations …

… I also had to let go of the idea that I needed an office with a view, uninterrupted time, and absolute silence to write (those two other big hurdles I listed above).

Those conditions don’t exist in my life, and clinging to them meant producing nothing. They became, just like my need to produce the “perfect prose” also an excuse not to write.

Instead, I learned to embrace the idea of owning 10% —or 30% or whatever—of something rather than 100% of nothing.

Finding Balance with my son

A related challenge was learning to balance my writing with Jacob’s needs and they did not need to be mutually exclusive.

I used to feel guilty if I wasn’t giving him my full attention every moment we were together, because, well, as you can see from my brief description above and other posts, he is a boy with a great many needs both here and now and also longterm (like learning to talk, eat properly, etc.).

But I realized that Jacob doesn’t always need my undivided attention – not for his therapies and not even for, I dunno, playing or making sure he has the little food he actually eats. After school, he’s exhausted from the sensory overload and needs downtime—often watching YouTube or resting.

He rarely calls out for me except if maybe he is thirsty or has wet his pants (and often not even then, so I still have to check). But even so … during these moments, I can edit a sentence or two, or even dictate a new idea. It’s not ideal, but it’s enough. It’s more than nothing.

No, really.

But seriously, I can edit maybe a 1000 words or so to my “okay satisfaction” in that kind of afternoon – 2 to 3 hours with all kinds of disruptions.

I had to accept that I couldn’t achieve a writing “flow” while caring for Jacob. Not that kind of, well, writing activity – but I guess a certain level of “editing flow”. Because flow for writing requires deep concentration, which is nearly impossible when you’re on standby to attend to a child’s needs.

I mean, it is possible to do in a noisy environment if you ditch perfectionism and dictate in your phone on the metro like I described above, but that’s about it.

Dictating at home or even writing words down page after page is not something I can do no matter how much I want to when I always have a de facto serious caring responsbility around the corner. When I am home alone with my son …

But editing? Editing is different. I can step away from a sentence, attend to Jacob, and then return to it without losing too much momentum. It’s a compromise, but it works.

I sometimes in this context think about the women I met in South America during my many travels there with my wife (back in the day … when it was just us). They carried their children everywhere in colorful scarves called awaios—to the market, while working, while selling goods.

Their children were always with them, yet they still managed to live their lives. It’s not a perfect analogy. Jacob’s needs are different, and the demands of caregiving are unique. But it reminded me that it’s possible to integrate personal passions into a life of constant care.

I’m not suggesting we compare ourselves to others who may be worse off. That’s not constructive.

But there’s value in drawing inspiration from those who manage to carve out space for themselves despite overwhelming responsibilities.

If they can do it, so can I.

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The Bottom Line

The conclusion is simple: we need to carve out personal space for ourselves – for self-actualization, whatever that looks like for us. Not just resting and recovery and such.

Self-actualization IS also self-care!

If we don’t recognize this, we also risk burning out, becoming ill, or worse. Lack of sleep will kill you. So will lack of meaning or connection to who you really are.

And if we’re not taking care of ourselves in that way either, we can’t take care of our loved ones. So even if it look impossible we have to find the time, space and energy to do SOMETHING.

The question isn’t whether we should do this, but how.

For me, it meant letting go of unrealistic expectations. I had to accept that my pre-Jacob ideas of writing—having an office, undisturbed time, perfect conditions—were no longer feasible.

I paid lip service to that for years but it was only in this year and maybe the year before that I practiced what I preached, that I got to a level mentally where I could do that.

So now I embrace “guerrilla writing”, imperfect drafts, and the idea that 30% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

Your situation may be different. Maybe you want to paint, start a YouTube channel, or learn a new skill. Whatever it is, the big challenge is not figuring out what it is as a carer but figuring out a way to do it in a way that works for you.

It might not be as satisfactory as you’d hoped, but it will be more satisfactory than not doing it at all. I hope I have given you a little inspiration in that regard!

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Final Thoughts (after the Bottom Line)

Carving out personal space as a carer isn’t about finding perfection. It’s about finding enough—enough time, enough energy, enough focus to do something that feeds your soul. Not the perfect time, space, energy. Enough.

It’s about accepting that the conditions will never be ideal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Because in the end, taking care of your self-actualization, too, isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.

Let me know what you do – paint, write, projects of any kind that are uniquely YOU – or that you want to do. And let me know how you are managing (or not) to get it done. Maybe because you are a carer, maybe because of some other obstacle.

It is worth discussing and helping each other to get further here. I’d say it’s as necessary as eating properly.

Maybe even more.