I am posting this around the end of the workday on Thursday. The end of day Thursday can kind of feel like the end of the week…but it isn’t. If you’re using my spreadsheets to track time this week, you can see that if the week starts Monday at 5 a.m., the mid-point of the week is 5 p.m. Thursday (as in, right now). There are still a lot of the 168 hours left to go!
That’s neither here nor there except to point out that the second half of the week shouldn’t be an afterthought. This is a lot of time. What would you like to do with it? If you haven’t thought about Friday/Saturday/Sunday yet (or for American readers, the whole holiday weekend into Monday) now would be a good time.
I hit “publish” in the lobby at parkour last night, then read The Economist for about 30 minutes. Then my son finished his class (8:25) and we drove home, stopping at Wawa as we always do to buy him a pretzel. I got home at 8:50 to find the trash out and the 6-year-old cleaned up, so all was good. I read to the 6-year-old, shut the house, then came back to sit with him while he fell asleep (scrolling during this time). I had originally set an evening hour intention of doing 30 minutes of a puzzle before I know I’d be at parkour, but I thought through the evening and realized I might have 30 minutes after the little guy fell asleep and before I needed to turn other people’s lights out. So, when I heard his breathing get slow and steady, I tiptoed out, went down, and spent a delightful 30 minutes on my puzzle. Without this intention I am quite sure I would have been on X and Instagram, so this was a win.
At 10 I said goodnight to the others, got ready for bed and lay in bed looking at email and other such things for a while. I was asleep at 10:45, and I slept straight through to 6:05, when I woke up on my own. I read blogs in bed until my alarm went off at 6:20. Then I showered and got the middle schoolers up at the usual time. The 14-year-old got up at 6:40 and then the…wait for it…11-year-old (!) came down a little later (he was already up).
Yes, my 4th child is now 11 years old. This is kind of hard to believe. Here’s my blog account of his speedy arrival overnight 11 years ago. I said happy birthday, and then got everyone into the van at 7:12 and down to the stop. I came back to wake up the 16-year-old and get the 6-year-old breakfast. B is back from her illness, so I started working at 7:45, albeit upstairs in my bedroom since the cleaners came to do the first floor at 8. I worked (including doing my weekly planning) until 9, at which point I drove 10 minutes to a local trail to walk with a friend. We chatted and walked to about 10:10, then I drove home, got coffee, and was at my desk 10:30. I was kind of distracted, but worked to 11:15, then did 15 minutes of music practice, then did another hour of work.
At 12:15 I took a break to get chili for lunch (leftovers from yesterday). I ate it while working on my puzzle — getting 30 minutes on that project since I felt like taking a real lunch break. I’m done except for the sky and tree branches at this point. At 12:45 I got myself back to my desk and I was on zoom at 1 to help facilitate a meeting of my writer’s strategy group. We chatted to 1:50, then I recorded podcast ads, and did an “email triage” to 2:30.
At that point I went upstairs to do a short (15 minute) strength session, just on my own, repeating some of the exercises from Monday’s session with my trainer. I listened to the rest of one of Mozart’s very early operas during this. I had kind of forgotten how much “child prodigy” is part of his identity — he composed this thing at age 11. My 11-year-old is great but he will…not be doing that.
I came downstairs at 2:45 and chatted with B, who had balloons for the birthday, donuts, and an update on the broken iPad we’re getting fixed — the tech called her while we were standing there and the good news is it was $85 and 45 minutes, a different outcome than I thought it might be.
Then it was back to work 3-4 p.m. At 4:05, I went to go get my daughter at jazz band practice. She was in the car around 4:25 and we got home 4:40. Now I am typing this before going to pick up the 16-year-old at his technology club practice. Then it will be dinner and my church choir practice — the first fully run by our new director. I imagine it won’t be much different, but we shall see!
Here’s my log:
7:30 work, read Economist
8 read Economist, drive
8:30 wawa, home, H stories
9 shut house, sit w/H, scroll
9:30 puzzle
10 kids, ready bed
10:30 scroll/email, sleep by 10:45
6 6:05 up on own/read, 6:20 shower
6:30 shower, dress, kids, breakfast
7 kids, bus, S up, H
7:30 H breakfast, work
8 work
8:30 work
9 drive, walk w/JS
9:30 walk w/JS
10 walk, home, email/coffee
10:30 work (extra pod notes)
11 work, music practice
11:30 work
12 work, lunch/puzzle
12:30 lunch/puzzle, work
1 work (WSG meeting)
1:30 work (WSG meeting)
2 work (ads, email triage)
2:30 strength, chat B/ipad
3 work
3:30 work (not focused)
4 go get R, wait/read Economist, drive
4:30 home, work
We are on our third music director since I joined my church choir almost 2 years ago. The first two were interims so their tenure was expected to be short. The third the person was hired to permanently fill the job (well indefinitely at least). I will say they were all very different, and set different tones. But the process itself is the same.