Time Management

I totally forgot to do a blog post yesterday. I was aiming for one every day through September. I don't think anyone noticed though...

Yesterday was a full day – full of what, I'm not exactly sure. No one big thing.

I've been having trouble cramming enough work hours into my days day, so yesterday I was determined to devote most of my kid-free six hours to working, to catch up on my hours for this week. But then I realized I had to go grocery shopping after I dropped the girls off at school. Then I put away the groceries and by then it was past ten. Then I worked, had lunch, worked some more, did email and some chores because my eyes were crossing, worked some more and it was time to pick up the girls. Then they played while I puttered, or sorted through the vast piles of paperwork they come home with this time of year. At five I made dinner, at six we ate, then I put Cordelia to bed, then Delphine, then went out for a walk at eight. I got home at nine, filled in the paperwork, paid bills, and went to bed.

In the midst of all that I worked for two hours and 35 minutes. That's twenty-five minutes short of the three hours a day I would like to work, that on a day I had intended to work tons and catch up. I'm having more trouble than I thought I would squeezing three work hours from the day. And it's not screwing around, either, I swear. I spend maybe twenty minutes on Twitter, and I don't read blogs at all.

No, it's all the other stuff: housework, errands, School Council stuff, social stuff, and the endless administration of being a parent of middle-class 21st-century school-age children: forms to fill out, activities to research and sign up for, birthday parties to plan, and on and on. Hopefully it will taper off now that the initial rush of forms and signups is done.

And I will have to work on outsourcing, downsizing, postponing and streamlining, so I can fit in that three hours of work, else I can't even pay for Cordelia's daycare.