March 30, 2016
I’d been wondering something in my quiet moments. Why I haven’t started that business yet, or finished a creative project? Surely I’ve not gotten lazy and complacent?
It’s possible but it doesn’t seem likely.
Despite knowing that I’m awfully tired from constantly being on the go, oh and also you know, health, it’s hard to fight the sneaking suspicion that my lack of greater achievement’s down to a personal failing.
To get to the truth, I decided to Time Study myself. What do I do all day? Where can I make improvements?
Between two full jobs, a full toddler, Seamus, and the odd hobby or two, there is no such thing as a typical day.
Our days fit in three categories: both of us are home and I have work, I’m home with LB and have work, I have work and no LB.
So let’s dive right in!
A day where I work without the baby around
PiC gets to sleep in until 6:20 am, could lay abed even later if he wanted because LB doesn’t stir until 6:30 but he likes to get started ahead of hir.
It’s 7:47 before I hear it. The door creaks open and a cackle floats in. It’s time for my morning kiss and goodbye, it’s a Daddy and LB day, which also means it’s a Mom and Seamus day.
I sit up. “Can I have a kiss?” Obligingly LB leans in and suckerfishes to my cheek. Little lick, little nibble. Baby kiss!
“Can I have one more?”
Ze convulses in a silent laugh, then twists upside down and sideways out of PiC’s arms to dangle over me, expectant.
I catch hir blithely trusting form and ze grins. One last kiss for the family and they’re off. Seamus and I look at each other, and flop back in bed for another ten minutes of cozy peace.
Sooner than I’d like, I crawl out of bed. It’s time for Seamus’s morning routine.
Checking email on my phone for emergencies, I brush my teeth and get dressed. The favorite part of my telecommuting schedule is usually living in my pajamas but somehow getting dressed in the morning feels more efficient than waiting til we have to go outside later.
Within 15 minutes of waking, Seamus has his medication and we’re headed outside. This used to be a quick dash to take care of business while I distractedly checked email on my phone. Thanks to a reminder of OHIO, I’ve adopted a firm stance about time wasted on rereading emails, so this is now our time to contemplate and appreciate nature in companionable silence. We move slowly at first in the morning chill, watching the last bits of fog lace through the tree branches, letting our old joints warm up.
By the time we find our stride, it’s time to mosey on back. Our morning jaunts take 25 minutes, and then Seamus prances at the door, anticipating breakfast. I get him started, start a load of whites in the wash, get a glass of water, find my glasses, and settle in to work.
Thirty seven emails and 4 hours later, it’s time to hydrate and grab a mini chocolate bar from the fridge. As an afterthought, and a placatory gesture to the adult somewhere in me, I also take the yogurt cup with me. Funny how when you set the yogurt and candy on the desk together, I end up eating the yogurt first. Don’t get me wrong, the candy disappears an hour later, too.
Think about eating a real meal. Keep working.
Early afternoon brings a quick flurry of activity: put clothes in the dryer, wash the dishes, prep the veggies for tonight’s dinner, open, recycle, and shred mail. Put together the week’s to do packet for bills. Then, back at the computer for three more hours.
Seamus dines early these days, but he always starts the dinner dance 30 minutes before just in case I can be wheedled. Most of the afternoon is dog-naps, but his internal clock is something to behold as his perked ears bob up behind my computer screen five minutes before I intend to take a break. Dinner for him is the work of a few minutes, then I’m back into the computer glare for another hour.
By 5 pm, a break would be welcome, as would be dinner, so I head into the kitchen to throw something together. Starch, veggie, protein!
Put the pot pie in the oven and sit back down to quickly draft about two-thirds of a blog post from that scrap of an idea that bubbled up with the pot pie fixings. 30 minutes later, the oven is cozy just in time for LB and PiC to get home, exclaiming about the buttery pastry scents wafting out the door.
LB hands me the contents of the daycare bag, one by one, and I quickly wash up hir bottles and lunch boxes.
LB’s still unbelievably upbeat after a long day with hardly a nap, so ze cackles hir way through deconstructed pot pie, and then experiments with gravity. Hey look! The chicken will SPLAT just like the carrot did, and so does the green bean! That’s hilarious! *cackles*
We know it’s a necessary phase but child, stop that!
We bundle The Messy One off to hit the showers once the play time turns to boredom and most of the food now gets rubbed in hir hair. A bottle of milk warms during shower time, and the non-bathing parent clears up the dinner mess.
By 8:20, ze’s creaking and chirping from bed, falling asleep, and I get a shower! I wryly think back to the early days of newborn life when a shower was a complete luxury and give myself a full 10 minutes before it’s back to work while PiC does post-dinner washing up.
My concentration starts to waver around 10:30 and I realize that the last ten minutes were lost to mindless oblivion. It’s time to call it, so I check everything one last time to make sure I hit my deadlines and head to the kitchen.
Usually packing LB’s lunch is still amusing: ze eats everything so I just compose a sort of balanced collection of snacks in bite sizes and that’s set. (Yes, I’m easily amused.) I’m the most underachieving bento box packing mom ever and I’m only that because it totally entertains me. If I could justify it, ze would be carrying hir own R2-D2 to daycare. Heck, if I had to pack a lunch that sucker would be MINE. PiC is in charge of the bottles and labeling everything according to daycare procedure.
Oh and Seamus needs his meds so I check on the supply and make a mental note. Second half of the month is always time to figure out if we need more medications or pill pockets, or basically anything on Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. I’m aiming for that 15% off, if we get a delivery.
The kitchen’s cleared up, lunch is packed, and we’ve made it through another day. I deserve bed and a book. If only sleep came to adults as easily as it does to the dog whose been snoring for the past 2 hours! These hours of the night are the most wasteful part of my 24 hours: I have to read to relax enough to sleep. There are days, though, sleep eludes me til past 2 am.
Yesterday, I worked til 2 am so at least trying to sleep is an improvement for this hour of the night.
What did I learn?
As much as I love seeeing LB’s face all day, when it comes to working, daycare is a blessing. I get so much done when it’s just me. I have so energy left at the end of the day to snuggle hir and do bedtime routines. If only daycare wasn’t a petri dish but that immune system needs to be built sometime and early is better than later.
Daycare has made a huge difference in our ability to get things done and not be exhausted every second of every day. It’s been absolutely critical in letting us both have our alone time professionally, and therefore have the energy to give each other personal time.
I’m not a morning person but sometimes my pain drives an extra early morning whether I intended to or not. This means that it’s not always a good idea to insist on getting everything done the night before. For the first time, I’m becoming relaxed about doing as much as I can, when I can, and trusting that the rest will get done in its own time.
:: What morning routines work best for you? Are you decidedly at your best at any particular time of day or day of week?
January 13, 2016
So how did I do with my Q4 plans?
Professional:
Evaluate status of the writing project – edit and rewrite.
Reschedule for 2016, Q1.
Ask a mentor or two to critique it, again.
One mentor agreed to read it, once I have a draft.
Blog at least 3x/week.
Almost. This blasted unending additional plague kept me from anything more than just survival for a while. I’m getting back up to speed.
Personal:
Host family for Thanksgiving.
Did it! I made way too much food but it was fun and relaxing. Next time, I’m copying Cloud‘s menu day-scheduling, though 🙂
Perhaps vacation for a week out of state – scheduling pending.
Not this quarter but definitely in 2016. It’s on the calendar and in our (free version) TripIt app!
Add 30 minutes at the gym 1x/week.
Not this quarter. Being sick for 6-8 weeks really did this quarter in.
How are you doing?
November 23, 2015
Spoiler alert: If you watch Grey’s Anatomy and haven’t watched recent seasons, and care about spoilers, don’t watch this clip. I don’t think the post is specifically spoilery but I’d need an outside opinion on that.
Onward!
I am HUGELY conflicted about this scene. Mind, I don’t watch Grey’s anymore, I used to have it on occasionally for background and it’s too much life drama for me to really get into. Plus I mainly enjoyed it because of Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh. Not the sex in the workplace, part, that weirds me out in a lot of ways, but their hard-driving, take no shit from anyone, I will prevail come hell or high water approach to work? Those were good.
And they weren’t caricatures, they were complex human women and I liked that.
On the one hand, I’m all about Bailey’s professional standards:
YES, you can only mentor someone for so long.
YES, a person must stand on hir own feet to know that ze can.
YES, you can be taught and taught and taught, but only YOU can actually put those lessons to use.
YES, you have to learn to work within the system in order to succeed in it and change it.
YES, part of the system dictates that Miranda has a fiduciary responsibility not to just give money away if it’s not asked for.
On the other hand, I’m not about that system AT ALL:
The system as it stands, where every individual must negotiate and with the internalized bias against women for negotiating, SUCKS.
I say this as someone who has negotiated in every single job she’s taken. I’ve fought for every raise and promotion to be at least close to commensurate to the value I brought. I make a decent salary. But the system SUCKS. The system is riddled with bias and is innately structured to benefit men, who are expected to negotiate, and discriminates against women who are penalized for negotiating.
Hell, according to the first study below, women are already penalized simply for being women at the point of application.
Ilana Yurkiewicz’s post Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters: scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.
So I’m firmly on the side of “everyone has to learn to stand on their own two feet”, but I’m also intensely uncomfortable with the assumption that women have an equal chance at the same money that men do, “just negotiate!”
It is NOT that simple.
Obviously, from the lower salaries that women were offered to begin with, they’d have to negotiate for a much larger amount just to catch up to what the men would ultimately receive.
And I’m tempted to say that Ellen Pao’s move to cut out negotiating entirely would be a good answer except that I don’t really trust companies to make a good, fair offer at the outset.
Getting back to that scene, my conflict stems from knowing that you have to challenged to get stronger. Sometimes being challenged results in your failure to rise, your failure to see it through, or your failure to even recognize there’s an opportunity to win in the challenge. Simultaneously, I rage at the fact that there are times it simply doesn’t matter how much you rise, or struggle, or fight, you lose because you fought, you lose because you fought as a women, you lose because it’s not “appropriate” to push back as a woman.
I don’t know what the answer is but I know this: there is a startling amount of bias in the current system and it sucks. And it sucks to see someone being admirable in her growth from a mentorship position to an authority position and realize that the line she’s holding for a damn good reason was drawn, and is redrawn every day, by people who never intended to level the playing field.
My feelings are complex on this.
More on this, if you really need the additional data
From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on the Initiation of Negotiation
From Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception: “negotiators deceived women more so than men, thus leading women into more deals under false pretenses than men.”
Harvard Business School on How Benevolent Sexism Undermines Women and Justifies Backlash: “Benevolent sexists, more often than not, are also hostile sexists”
October 5, 2015
So how did I do with my Q3 plans?
Professional:
Edit the writing project.
Nope. I still need to commit many many more words to paper before we get to an editing stage, so this project is about six months behind thanks to my other project. (Just kidding … mostly)
Ask a mentor or two to critique it.
Yes, I thought that actually asking someone to have a look at it would force me to write. It doesn’t always work that way.
Blog at least 3x/week.
Yep!
Personal:
Vacation in San Diego.
Sort of! We did do a trip, anyway.
Host a good friend for a week.
Yes! We actually had more than one friend spend time with us and it was glorious.
Keep walking 5 of 7 days per week.
Yes! It wasn’t always a long walk but I’ve gotten myself out and about frequently enough to feel like I’m getting a little wind in my sails.
How are you doing?
July 10, 2015
So how did I do with my Q2 plans?
Professional:
Finish the first draft of my writing project: add 20,000-40,000 words.
No. This obviously impacts my next quarter. I was going to be down on myself about it but realized that I’ve been holding down a full time paying job and full time momming while we continue working on childcare and surviving that means it’s OK that I haven’t made a ton more progress but I will and I’m willing to buy my time back.
Set up a mailing list for anyone who’s interested in reading the book(?) project to get updates when the time comes.
No: I did decide to use Mailchimp but tootled around waiting to see if anyone wanted to send me a referral.
Got off my duff and signed up because waiting would only benefit no one or not me.
Then realized I don’t think I want to use Mailchimp right now so maybe I’ll just take names and email addresses via Google Survey.
Test 3 possible business ideas.
No: I discarded several out of hand once I realized that the proposed target audience either wouldn’t pay for the goods/services, would be a pain to work with, or wasn’t viable with my preferred business structure.
Blog at least 3x/week.
Yes: I posted about 3-4x/week depending on the week.
Personal:
Spend a weekend with at least one friend we’d like to see annually.
Yes and yes: did this twice!
Visit LB’s cousins.
Yes: Ze LOVED meeting the cousins.
Get outside to walk 5 of 7 days per week.
Maybe: Most days, but 3-4 days per week sometimes, so I’ll call this a pass. The point is to get outside most days.
July 6, 2015
Welcome to the second installment of my blogging the Write A Blog People Will Read Course!
NOTE: This is a review of how I’m learning from the course so this is just one possible experience.
***
In Module Two, we’re learning not to write just for the sake of having words on the screen, but to write what matters. By that measure, at best, 5% of the early years of this blog (no, no, don’t go see, take my word for it, please) were anything but flotsam.
Most of it was meandering bits of daily jumble. Not at all compelling unless you were just wondering what I’d done or worried about that day. (No one was.)
Writing something that matters.
Much like the difference between living to eat and eating to live, there’s a vast gulf between churning out text for the sake of posting things and crafting a piece that, well, people want to read.
This lesson hits me square between the eyes. Great writing is a revel and a joy to read. The writing here doesn’t meet that standard in my not-so-humble opinion.
I don’t cookie cutter my money posts just to have something to post but does it have value to anyone else? Beyond exercising my writing muscles and keeping my money mojo going, what does my writing about money and family and so on really do for my readers? Is it informative and engaging that you know my month to month thoughts or am I just shouting into the wind?
(In)accessibility
A good friend from the blogging world, not so incidentally a successful blogger, told me once that my posts are too long and “vocabulary is far too extensive”.
I understood that to mean that I fail hard at the general rule of thumb that in order to write for the broadest audience, you ought to be clocking between a sixth and seventh grade level. This is a valid and valuable criticism. Even the NIH recommends this level of writing!
I’m not sure how not to write like I think. That means using words that taste right in my mind. What you see here is the voice I hear in my head. And like a perfect, warm apple pie with the exquisitely flaky crust, and five dashes of cinnamon, using precise words to communicate is so satisfying. Even when I sound like a nerd.
(It’s because I really AM a nerd.)
D’you suppose that’s what keeps my audience to the elite few? 🙂
Does my blathering feel inaccessible to you? (Is blathering a common word? I have the worst trouble with this.)
Killing your little darlings
Maybe this is where my efforts should most be concentrated.
I do edit most writing, truly. First drafts are painful to read. But sometimes, final rounds of edits leave me with posts that have tripled in length and I suspect that your eyes probably start glazing over by the time you scroll a third or fourth time.
Reflection
There’s a lot to digest in this second module and learning how I should apply the lessons. Good advice is only useful when you implement it, after all.
See my review of Module 1
May 18, 2015
As I mentioned some time ago, I’m an affiliate of Donna Freedman’s new course (check it out if you’re interested in writing) and I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Or fingers are.
Of course, no new experience, especially for self improvement, should go unblogged, given the particular bent of this blog. Come along for the ride and maybe you’ll find a reason give it a try yourself.
I’m coming to this course as an already established blogger who probably isn’t going to quit anytime soon so Module 1, addressing the “why” of blogging is more of a reminder that stories have value, and writing stories well makes them more accessible.
There are hundreds, thousands, of blogs out there but I struggle to find consistently well-written, unique, compelling blogs. I love reading, even more than I love writing, and finding a fresh authorial voice with stories to tell is like finding That Exact Spot on the puppy’s belly that, when scratched, melts the furry marvel into a limp-limbed puddle, cross-eyed with satisfaction. In other words: bliss.
Maybe that’s why I think this course can be such a boon. So many people have tales to tell and selfishly, I want to read them. And I don’t think I’m alone in that desire!
Aside from that purely selfish point of view, while not everyone’s job requires any amount of writing that matters, some of us do. Having that knack in your toolbox lets you present yourself, your ideas, and proposals to the best advantage. Another way to get your way? Why not!