When things get too cluttered, I reorganize. My life has been very cluttered of late and so on Sunday I spent some thought on how to reorganize my time. I decided that Tuesdays in particular need to be rearranged. Tuesday has been my accounting and laundry day for the past year or more. But this year Tuesday is also the day of kids’ art lessons and my writer’s group. This means that I spend all day Tuesday focused on getting things done and when it comes time for me to leave for writer’s group, the kids don’t want me to go because they haven’t had my attention all day long. So I tossed accounting out of the Tuesday schedule. I also decided that Tuesday needs to be free of non-time-critical business tasks. Tuesday is now my day to focus on family needs, housekeeping needs, and a little bit of writing.
The accounting still has to get done and I like to do it early in the week so that it doesn’t loom over the rest of the week. So Monday is now my accounting day. In theory that will help me wrap my head around exactly what work needs to be done during the week. Wednesday through Saturday aren’t so neatly organized. Into them fall all the remaining tasks which have to get done during the week. Sunday is set aside for family and reverence. The other thing I need to remember is the lovely daily schedule I’ve got posted right here next to my computer. It blocks out times of the day that are for business and times which are not. I’ve been completely ignoring it lately. This means I’ve been checking email “just for a minute” during times when I really need to be focused on making dinner or getting the kids into bed. I need to remember that the internet is much more fun if I take solid breaks from it.
This week is my first week on the rearranged schedule. Monday went well. Tuesday did not go as I expected. I kept it clear of business tasks, but the piles of energy to scour the house clean did not materialize. Instead I did some internal cleaning. I slept for a solid two hour block. That is important because this year’s schedule has me consistently shorting myself on sleep. My body needs 8 hours in each 24 to be off. I’ve been giving it about six. My health has suffered as a result. The rest of the day vanished as I cleared up some misunderstandings with a friend, and spent a lot of time staring at the walls letting loose thoughts wander through my head so I could see what they were. All those things that I packed away to think about later, got unpacked and I was able to figure out how I think and feel about some of it. This kind of contemplative time has also been seriously lacking in my life of late. So, even though the house didn’t get clean, I’m calling the new Tuesday schedule a success. I’m going to do Tuesday the same way next week.
Then last night as I was beginning to make plans for kicking myself into gear today, I realized that today is Halloween. This means I have piles of kid-events on my schedule that I’d forgotten about. I can’t dive into overdue business tasks, they have to wait for tomorrow. This means they’ve begun to loom in my brain. And naturally I stayed up way too late last night, thus canceling out the benefit from the nap yesterday. Sometimes I am not so smart.
For right now I need to run buy a bag of Cheetos to deliver to Link’s classroom for his party. Then I need to go to Gleeks class to watch the pumpkin celebration filled with becostumed first graders lisping their way through halloween songs. Later there will be a Halloween parade, Kiki’s first school dance, and trick-or-treating followed by putting sugar-hyper children to bed.