Always Juggling

I'm honored but embarrassed when people tell me they don't know how I juggle everything in my life.  I know it is a deeply flattering sentiment so I always accept the compliment in gratitude.  But, I often reply without a whit of self-deprecation that, to continue the analogy, I drop a lot of balls and feel bad about it, so it turns out I'm not actually that good at juggling.

I will say that two things I am actually good at are packing lots of things into a day, and being able to defer leisure until later.  Both have been stretched to the limit and beyond in this current stage of my life, in which I am president of a consulting firm, serve on my local school board, and am deeply involved in the lives of our three kids who are at three very different and important points in their childhood development.  

It's a lot, which requires getting a lot done each day and not having much free time, to say nothing of the logistical challenge of managing it all, especially amid COVID and recently having to contend with the limitations and uncertainties associated with the arrival of a huge snowstorm.  To wit, here are some snapshots from a workweek from earlier this month, which is not necessarily typical of my life now but nor is it much of an anomaly:

Monday 

4am-6am After waking for prayer and Bible, I ran and lift down in the basement because snowstorm meant roads clogged and Y closed, and then showered and got myself packed and ready for the day.

6am-8am Asher has lately been sleeping in a bit so I was able to get an hour of work in before he arose.  I served him breakfast and then made myself breakfast while checking personal email, social media, and work email.

8am-12pm Sat with Asher as he did school and tried mostly unsuccessfully to also do my own work and be in meetings.  Mercifully, the school day got compressed to just the morning due to the snow.  Still, it was a chaotic first half of the day.

12pm-6pm A slightly easier second half of the work day on the Asher front, as he mostly hung out with his siblings or watched TV, but I'm pretty sure that he made a guest appearance at each of the four meetings I had in the afternoon.

6pm-10pm Dinner, work, bedtime with Asher, work.  My last waking hour I read a book and played some Scrabble on my phone before dozing off.

Tuesday 

4am-6am Same as the morning before.

6am-8am Same as the morning before.

8am-6pm Amy was able to work from home and didn't have any meetings for the first half of the day, so she helped Asher with school in the morning while did work and had meetings, and then for the second half of the day my work and meetings were interspersed with checking in on Asher.

6pm-10pm Same as the evening before.

Wednesday

4am-6am Y open again but roads too slick for biking, so instead after prayer and Bible I walked there.  Lifted, swam, showered, and walked home.  

6am-8am Mercifully, Asher slept in again, so I was able to get a critical hour of work in, and then we did breakfast together before I walked him to school and took the subway into the office.

8am-4:30pm Crammed a full day's worth of work and meetings around two hours of parent-teacher conferences for our three kids (12 Zoom check-ins in total!).

4:30pm-6pm Hoofed it to the SEPTA sales office to renew my card, called in an order to a local food truck, hopped on the subway back to my neighborhood, picked up the food, picked up Asher, got him settled at home, and did one last work call before dinner.

6pm-10pm Same as the night before, except that with our car buried I opt to place a grocery order online.  Took 30 minutes but that's less time than it usually takes to go to the physical store.  Maybe I should mix this in more often when I'm strapped for time.  Hold this thought.

Thursday

4am-6am Same as the morning before.

6am-8am True to form, as the week progresses Asher starts to wake up earlier and earlier, and sure enough this morning he popped up at 6am.  But it helped because he actually had a kindergarten assignment due the next day, so we worked on that some and he still had time for morning cartoons.

8am-5pm Seven school board meetings during the day, and desperately tried to handle work matters before and in between.  

5pm-8pm Alas, now I remember why I prefer to go to the supermarket: several items were out of stock so I have to squeeze in a mini-run to the local grocery store and cram everything in my backpack en route to Asher pick-up.  Home, work, dinner, work, Asher bedtime.

8pm-??? Catch up on the mostly lost work day.

Friday

4am-6am Two swims in a row is enough for me, so I went back to the treadmill and free weights in the basement after morning prayer and Bible, and then showered and got ready for the day.

6am-8am Same as the morning before.

8am-5pm A somewhat normal and uneventful work day.

5pm-8pm Asher pick-up, work, dinner, work, Asher bedtime.

8pm-??? Saturday mornings are the one time a week I sleep in (well, 5:30am vs. 4am), so Friday nights are when I can just power through all work, School Board, and personal administrative tasks without having to keep an eye out on getting a reasonable amount of sleep for the next day.  

If you got through all that, you can see that I hardly had a whit of free time, not that weekends are much different since I have a very eager five-year-old to contend with.  Such is my life nowadays.  Looking ahead to days where I can catch a breath every once in a while, and until then I'm leaning into the schedule-packing and leisure-deferring.