Audrey T. Carroll
Spoon Theory: A Game
You wake up with 35 spoons. What will you decide to get accomplished in a day? Fill in the schedule with the number of spoons needed for each task. Pay careful attention to wants vs. needs. (Medication, for example, is necessary, though sometimes forgotten.)
The following appear in a grid with each task accompanied by pictures of a number of spoons that the task costs:
Showering: 5 spoons
Getting Dressed: 2 spoons
Making Breakfast/Lunch (You): 2 spoons
Making Breakfast/Lunch/Snack (Child): 3 spoons
Getting Child Ready for School (Neurodivergent): 5 spoons
Making Coffee: 2 spoons
Feeding Birds: 1 spoon
Sorting & Taking Medications: 1 spoon
School Work: 2 spoons
Writing: 3 spoons
Researching: 2 spoons
Picking Child Up from Bus Stop: 3 spoons
Teaching Prep: 3 spoons
Class (3-hour): 4 spoons
Teaching (75 minutes x2): 5 spoons
Making Dinner (3 people): 4 spoons
Cleaning: 4 spoons
Bath Time (Child): 3 spoons
Bedtime Routine (Child, Neurodivergent): 4 spoons
Reading or Watching TV: 1 spoon
The following tasks appear in a schedule list with an empty box in front of each, where you can write the number of spoons that each task costs. Below the list is an equals line and a place to notate the total spoons used:
Shower
Getting Dressed
Make Child’s Breakfast
Make Child’s Lunch & Snack
Sort & Take Medication (1)
Get Child Ready for School (Neurodivergent)
Make & Eat Breakfast
Teach
Feed Birds
School Work / Teaching Prep
Make & Eat Lunch
Pick Up Child from Bus Stop
Sort & Take Medication (2)
Class
Write / Research
Make Dinner (3 People)
Bath Time (Child)
Read or Clean
Bedtime Routine (Child, Neurodivergent)
Sort & Take Medication (3)
Reading / Watch TV
Total Spoons Used (Out of 35 Available)
What did you have to abandon?
How are you going to get the rest of it done?
How would your day change if you’re feeling especially sick and only have 25 spoons? 15?
How would your day change if you woke up with 50 spoons?
How many spoons do you have left for an emergency? (Ex. Your child gets sick at school)
What did you have to sacrifice to get through the day?
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Diversity & Inclusion Editor for the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.