I think it’s time that I, like the devs at work, have a little meetingometer that shows how many hours of meetings I have scheduled in a day. For the last two weeks, I think I’m averaging three to four hours a day in meetings. It’s been crazy. On the upside, I’m well organized & have my priorities set within an inch of their lives. And mine. But I don’t actually have enough time to follow up on all the stuff coming out of the meetings and in between the meetings that I need to do.
At home? Not so much with the priorities or accomplishing or organization. I am a bad wife/mother (by organizational standards, of course — I adore & take care of my family appropriately) & an even worse housekeeper. I was reading the time/productivity book we’re going through at work this weekend & thinking about all this. Thinking maybe I need to create a dashboard for home stuff. And I thought about it. And I thought about it a little more. And it dawned on me that I’m so abysmally organized at home because I spend my 40 work hours so ridiculously well organized & prioritized & hyper-functional, that by the time I get home, I’m all productived out. Try as I might, I can’t muster a whole lot of additional energy to move at anyone else’s pace but my own, to the occasional annoyance of my family’s. The important stuff gets done. Sometimes by someone who is too impatient for me to get around to it in my own time, though I would eventually work around to it.
My own time. Those three words are really problematic. As a wife/mother, “my own time” is supposed to be sublimated into taking care of the hearth. I fail at this miserably. And even worse, I have trouble feeling any substantial guilt about it. That said, while I’m selfish & don’t get shit around the house done in any sort of efficient or organized way, I’m not very good at using the ‘my own time’ that I squander doing actual nice things for myself. I spend a lot of time on the internet. My own [cyber]space, of sorts. Friday night I’m going to the spa with JB. This qualifies as something nice for myself. Something nice for myself would also be learning how to take vacation. No. I really don’t have any idea how to “do” vacation. It’s a fairly alien concept to me & it confuses me & I end up squandering time off in a similar way to my weekends.
I recognize that these things are largely a symptom of an imbalance that requires correcting, but I’m uncertain how to bring balance. I can’t very well become less productive, organized, prioritized, at work…
And that’s about enough thinking along those lines tonight. I’m going to go practice guitar and look at my email and eventually wend my way to bed.
