When most people ask me how my voluntary unemployment is going I say that I like it and I'm still busy. All true. But here's the longer answer.
I still base how well my life is going on how many things I'm getting done. So I keep having to remind myself of all the things I'm doing that aren't on any list to cross off or are less concrete. I'm exercising again and losing weight (slowly) but more importantly that's keeping me healthy. I can even put that on a list - a goal list. Our life is less hectic, particularly during dinnertime (goal, check). This is the first year that Dylan has had homework and with that and piano lessons/practice, getting home at 6:30pm three days a week and trying to do dinner and getting the kids in bed by 8pm would have been crazy. Now we have time for family worship after dinner and some wrestling time with daddy. And Martin is less stressed and doesn't have to cook dinner as much.
I've gotten to do some things that I was never able to do before - take Lydia on playdates with her friends from school, go on the annual trip to Cox farms with Dylan's school, take Lydia to the Frying Pan Park, have time for the kids to just be home and play, be around for Dylan to have playdates with the neighbors, and have time for last minute shopping trips when I forget to get a gift for someone. Things are a lot less stressful as far as our schedule. I spend a lot of time at the playground. My kids are enjoying the outdoors (a priority for our family) and I'm being available to connect with people there.
And as I recently read in Simplicity Parenting, it's this downtime where real connection with your children are made. These intangibles (being more healthy, more quality time, etc.) are hard things for this to do list person.
I got a bunch of little projects done and even some work on a big project in that first month after I quit. But life fills up quick and even things that I agree to that I don't think will take much of my time end up do taking time. Plus, I'm not very disciplined. If I have 20 minutes before going to pick up the kids, I'm not going to read or clean a bathroom or file papers, I'm going to check facebook. Some of the best advice I ever got was to chop up every job until 15 minute chunks. That's the way to get things done. Then, even when you have a few minutes, you make progress.
I've decided to inject a little more structure into my 12 hours per week that the kids are in school so that I can see more fruit. I'm going to take 3 classes in the spring. So hopefully I will feel more of an urgency to be diligent about my school work. I think I can handle the load because I've had the prof already and she is easy and the other classes don't have any prereqs and are usually taken as 8 week classes and I'm going to take them as 16 week classes.
But mostly I just need to enjoy this time that I'm in. And I need to celebrate progress and not focus on what's not done.
I realized that there were a lot of things that I was doing at work and know I have to do them at home so I didn't gain quite as much time as I thought I might. And I do miss work and the issues and the people. I went to a meeting for something at Dylan's school and I was so into it and feeling like I was back in the game again. So it's hard when you like both (or many) things, determining how to spend your time. If I could do work for 15 hours per week, when I wanted to do that work (no set hours), I'd be working now. The 30 hours per week scheduled work hours was too much but I'd love to find another arrangement to get back in the game. All in good time. Just going to enjoy this season for now. It's a good one.
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