Yesterday was long. I got up at 6:22 to get my exercise clothes on, and then wake the kids up. I went upstairs and ran two miles on the treadmill before seeing the three big kids out the door. I had a lot of calls all day, and in the middle of it, a visit to the preschool to celebrate the almost-4-year-old’s birthday, a few days early (school is closed on his actual birthday). I read “My Truck Is Stuck” and showed baby pictures. Good times.
At 4:00 I left to go pick up the 14-year-old at the middle school and take him to Wawa for a pretzel, and then to fencing. I dropped him off, drove home, and got the 16-year-old (in a tux!) to take him to school for his 5:30 call. I went home, helped see the 8-year-old off to swim, ate a quick dinner, then went to the high school for a 7:00 choir concert. That was great (my son was in three different vocal ensembles…) and my parents came from New Jersey too to see it. I got home around 9, and then the 3-year-old was still up so I put him to bed. Then I did some work after because I could see that the next few work days were going to be crunched.
But life is mostly good. We’ll do a few more Christmas light/train displays this weekend but the days are pretty open (well, what passes for open for us). I think I’m 85 percent there on the presents. And I’m having a lot of fun with Vanderhacks, my new every-weekday-morning newsletter. If you haven’t checked it out, please do. Current cadence is four free and one paywalled post per week, with the paywalled one being a “best productivity advice” kind of round up on a topic. But that could change as I figure this out.
One request: I am writing about time tracking for something longer, and I’m looking to talk to a few folks. I know that the majority of my readership is female, but I’m trying to be balanced in this piece, so if you know any men who tracked their time and got some interesting revelations from doing so, I would be interested in chatting with them. As always, you can email me at laura at lauravanderkam dot com.
Before Breakfast — Some fun episodes this week! I talked about how you should “Make little moments festive” and why it’s wise to “Build in life maintenance time.” Please check it out!
I continue to be observing things in preparation for my upcoming 2024 project: Listening to all the works of Bach. I am seeing that if I add up my in-the-car time I should definitely have some listening options. I’m also figuring out how to make this work on days when I’m on family vacations. I may just try to get ahead for some of those in order to only have to fit in, say, a short organ prelude on a Disney day…