Time Well Spent

I tend to keep myself pretty busy. What can I say, I like to be
productive. Perhaps the most telling indication of this aspect of my
neurosis is what I do with down time. Even on a typical weekend, I've
queued up a whole laundry list of to-do's. That list gets longer if
it's a three-day weekend.

And in the past seven months, I've had three spells of a week or more
of no work and no school. Last August, I had quit my old job and
finished my summer classes, and didn't start my new job and my new
classes for another two weeks. And, importantly, we hadn't yet
adopted Jada. So, of course, I felt it the perfect time to plow
through a huge house project, which ate up practically the entire down
time.

Over the holidays, as a full-time student whose part-time internship
was through school, I truly had a winter break: three weeks of no
classes and no internship. This time, we were already with child.
But I still decided to squeeze in another, albeit smaller work
project. This one took about a week and a half.

This past week was Spring Break. No classes, no internship. But this
time, no big house project. I decided instead to spend as much time
as I could with my daughter. Partly to give Amy a much-needed break,
since she'd been putting in extra parenting hours with me being busier
this semester between school and work and job interviews. Partly
because it was only one week, and there weren't any major house
projects that I could think of anyway that could fit into such a
relatively short time period.

But mostly because I don't want to look back on this first year of
being a parent and feel regret that I didn't enjoy the moment. Or,
more correctly, the moments. Taking Jada through campus and watching
her walk around and wave at passersby. Playing blocks or cars or
dolls. Watching her grin her toothy grin. Holding her as she falls
asleep after a particularly active day.

I go back to work and school on Monday, so Amy'll be picking up the
slack for me again. And hopefully, come early summer, I'll be going
back to work full-time, and depending on the hours and the commute, I
might have very little time to see Jada. So it felt good to have a
week where I didn't feel like I needed to be super-productive in my
studies or in keeping up with the house or in anything else but
spending quality time with my daughter. I guess you could say I
really did have a productive week.