Back to work full time and away from home:
Let me crystalize this for you. Although I have spent a good bit of my life as a SAHM (wait, is it “a” SAHM or “an” SAHM?) I have always worked in some capacity. And for the past several years I managed my own business from home. Still, it was easy for me to take an afternoon off once in a while to mow the lawn or make a Costco run. Now that I am “back to work full time AND away from home,” these simple tasks are huge deals. I am hyper-scheduling my time, mentally anyway, to take advantage of every moment of daylight during my non-working hours. And I am fighting a constant battle to maintain the seamlessly run household I had balanced during 15 years of child-raising. So when the weekend rolls around I have already filled each hourly slot on my imaginary daily tasks calendar – along with a vague value attached to each item. Today my mental A-1 list includes: 1) buying and loading tax software so 2) I can begin the process of entering the data I have been accumulating over the past few weeks 3) taking my daughter shopping for a Spring wardrobe she desperately needs since she’s grown about a foot since last year 4) paying bills and 5) picking up the yard and cutting back the tall maidenhair grasses that line my driveway.
Mind you, there are lots and lots of other tasks that could be filtered in to this list – but none of them have the high priority (A-1) that these do. These are the “must see to” items which, barring the unexpected, will NEED to be accomplished today. And number 5 most probably will be the first one to drop off the list if I run out of time or daylight, but it is the most visible task on the list and, as such, will bug me all week if left uncompleted. I can forgive myself not cutting back the plants and perennials behind the house – those I do not see everyday when I leave for or return from work. But the ones that line the driveway? They are brown and bent over and smashed from heavy wet snows – a far cry from the airy feathery grassy-ness they should soon start to be again. Seeing them in this state makes me feel sad because I know that they can’t grow into their new greenery with all that old nasty stuff holding them back.
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I can SO relate with this post, now into my second week at my new job. I feel like there is such a learning curve I need to overcome, and that is forcing me to really think hard about how I’m spending my time outside of work. Undoubtedly, I expect that, at least in the short run, my time outside of work will be really limited. Work and the associated training that I need to get, will spill over.
Some things are going to have to be pared back indeed.
And yet, I’m very grateful and excited about the opportunity to grow and change.
I’m encouraged to see how you’re managing it, Jeanne.
Yes, it’s hard to complain about it when so many people wish they had that problem. We are lucky we have the choice to make. But it is still hard to lose that slow thoughtful pace that allows us to enjoy the walk, ponder the garden and mull over our choices in the grocery store.
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