Short on time

[valancy_jane]

Unfortunately, most days go like this:

- Baby wakes. Breastfast for her. It's 5amish.
- Get to work by 6.
- Work until 5, 530.
- Make dinner until 6, sometimes 630. (Takes full hour or more as many baby interruptions. Fussy time starts around 5.)
- Eat dinner until 6:45.
- Get baby ready for bed/nurse to sleep 6:45-7:30/8.
- Clean up house, dinner 730-830.
- 30 minutes to self, then bed.

In this 30 minutes, sometimes hour if I'm wild and stay up late, I try to writeeditreadcleanorganizeplan. Then I brush my teeth and wash my face and go to bed and start over.

Sometimes I get stuff done by simply staying up until midnight and working on virtually no sleep. But that's rare. I like sleep. Mostly I just wait for the weekend, where I might get 2 hours a day to myself when she naps.

I'd like to write interesting things, but as you can see, pretty much every spare bit of time and talent I have is spent elsewhere at the moment.

I'll be back when I can be.

Comments

[knaveofstaves]

Speaking from far more personal experience than I care to dwell on: Be careful not to over do the skimming free time from your sleep time thing. Even if you make sure to get extra sleep on days you don't work, your body will eventually rebel and you'll basically pass out for like 24 hours. At least, that's what's happened to me before.

[rinue]

I have honestly never even been able to experiment with the whole "cut back on sleep" thing. Not because I sleep through alarms or anything, but because when I'm sleepy I am not functional in even a small way, and all my conversations go "I'm tired!" and all my writing is "meh meh meh I'm not writing this."

[valancy_jane]

I rarely do, and I don't miss out on too much sleep - I still get 5 or 6 hours. About once every week or two I'll stay up until midnight or 1 and be able tog et a few things done - email, time with C - and it keeps me going. Morale do be critical.

[rinue]

So true about morale! Not trying to backseat drive on the sleep; just noting that I myself have never really been able to employ this strategy. I would sometimes stay up all night in college to get something finished for a morning deadline or exam, but afterward I would have to go to bed and sleep for like 8 hours, wake up and eat dinner, and then go back to sleep for another 9 hours.

[valancy_jane]

Oh, no worries. I just feel badly that I've overworried folks!

Really, things are a lot better. It's just hard because we donl't get a break-nonstop treadmill-no day off together, and to-do's are massively piling up. We're reaching out for help (a little childcare so we can both work Fridays and have Sunday off together, housekeeper visit maybe once in a while) and we can't bloody get anyone to answer our emails. We're talking 20 prospective inquiries and NADA.

So...not much left of me/us to go around.

Frantically catching up on email/to-do's now as she's freakishly slept in!!! I'm usually grateful if she makes it to 7am and it's nearly 9!

[valancy_jane]

Oh, I really don't do it often. Like, twice a month. That's the problem - I do prioritize sleep, so...pretty much no time for me. And that's ok. I don't mean to be doom and gloom. Just a heads up that I'm sort of without time to do anything but family and squeeze in a little writing in between grocery lists.