Free Time

I do NOT knit.

But I love reading "The Yarn Harlot." I've gotten her books from the library before and I downloaded a sample of her book All Wound Up for my Nook.


This weekend I read through those few sample pages where she talks about how annoying it is when people see her knitting and say something like, "I might do that if I had your free time." The author's point was that most people have some amount of free time or down time. Whether we use it to read or watch TV or surf the internet or knit, we have some. We all make choices about how we use what free time we have. The people who look at her sideways in a doctor's office as she is knitting have chosen to use their free time (while in the waiting room) to fret about their wait or to check email on their phone or whatever. She chooses to spend that time knitting.


As I read her rant (which was completely enjoyable) about the perception that she knits because she has nothing better to do or has too much free time, I starting thinking about my lamentations about free time.

It feels like "I never have any free time." My weekends zip by all to quickly. My post-work time at home seems to be over in a blink. But in reality, I choose how I spend my time. Some Mondays I leave school as soon as my official schedule is over. Other days I get caught up in a meeting or I decided to stay and get some things done. My "evening" can start at 3:15 or 5:15, depending on my after school obligations and choices. No matter what time I leave school, though, my time is booked with mom-duties until 8pm. If I have to bring work home that I couldn't get to during the day, that has to be squeezed in as well. And if I don't go to bed by 10 pm, my students get a  grumpy librarian/lunch lady the next day. My evening free time is finite.

Even so, on a "bad" day or a busy day, I can usually carve out an hour of time every day that's just for me. An hour's not bad! Sure, I'd love to have more, but during the school week - four days - that's four hours to do what I choose - read a book, surf the internet, be crafty, read a magazine, blog, journal, draw, etc.

What I realized is my true problem isn't a lack of time.

It's an overabundance of hobbies.

There are too many things I want to do with that hour or so a day. I can't read a book AND a magazine AND do some scrapbooking AND check my email AND work on an art journal AND check out Pinterest in one hour. I can't read a book for the school library AND a mystery for me AND non-fiction book on a topic I want to study in the same hour. It just can't be done.

In order to be content, I am going to need to lose a dozen hobbies or lower my expectations for what I can reasonably do in a week.

Wish me luck.

I Wish....

I Wish.... (9/24/12)

I wish I had time to read like I used to  - like I want to.

I wish I had time to be crafty.

I wish I had one more room in my house to deal with the clutter I don't have time to sort (I could just shove it in a room and enjoy the rest of my space).

I wish I could get all the books in the library office cataloged and on shelves so students could use them rather than look at them longingly through the door.

I wish I knew how to help my son click faster and better with his school work this year.

I wish I could "do it all" and keep my sanity - and have time to sleep.

I wish there had been two of me this summer - one who got work done at school and one who got work done at home. [I think I would be more content now if that had been the case. Right now, I can't even tell you where the summer went. I did a lot of work, but it doesn't seem like I did enough to match the time I should have had.]

I wish I could get back to a place of contentment with my life.


I know I'm not going to give up searching for that contentment.

Pause Button

Did you seen the "Easy Button" commercials that were popular a few years ago? I've decided I don't need an "easy" button - I need a pause button.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world moving around me while I get caught up - or even ahead - on the tasks that need to be done.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I tackle all of Dad's papers that are still sitting in boxes from last summer. I don't want to blow through them and end up throwing out something I'd want later. [And frankly, I'm not sure where I'd put anything I chose to keep.]

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I clean my house.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I process new books for the library that are waiting (and waiting... and waiting).

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I clean out old junk and make space for other... "stuff."

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I catch up on the email that piles up by 40 or 50 messages a day.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I do some things that make me feel like myself again - reading books and being crafty.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I help my son get a handle on his school responsibilities so we can go back to enjoying some of our time together rather than wrestling over school work every night.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world so I can just stop and breathe.


See, I can do some of these things, but I can't do all of them. If I could hit pause, get something done, then hit play again, I could get twice as much done. I could sleep until I wasn't tired any more. I could do my household responsibilities and my parenting responsibilities and my work responsibilities without feeling like I'm only skating by on all of them rather than doing anything with excellence.


In the absence of a pause button, a Time Turner would do, but I know they were all destroyed in the Battle at the Department of Mysteries, so I guess I'm out of luck there, too....

What a Difference a Day Makes

Recently I was talking to a friend about the new school year. I was sharing my fatigue and adjustment woes (as I have enumerated here already) and she asked how things were different this year.

"Last year I had 14 classes. This year I have 17. I was actually part time last year but this year...."

I'm working full time.

I'm working full time.

I haven't worked full time like this (outside the home) in 9 years. Even then, it wasn't like teaching; I put in my 40-45 hours and then I was done. With teaching, you work 40 hours and then work at home on lessons and lesson plans and bulletin boards, and curriculum plans, etc.

I used to have hours if not days off - to myself - to go to the book store or do the grocery shopping or take care of chores at home. Now I have to do them on the weekends like every other mom who works full time.

I'm severely out of practice.

But this does build a larger degree of hope that this will pass - I will build up my endurance, my family will find new routines that work for this new schedule, and life will feel manageable again.

3:15

My school day officially ends at 3:15, but I rarely leave the building then. Either I have an after school activity to supervise or I am trying to make the most of quiet hours without students to get caught up on tasks that don't fit into the daily school schedule.

But one day, during the first few days of school, I left at 3:15.

It was glorious! We came home because we thought a service provider was coming and we had to be here to meet him. (I didn't know I'd come home to a message that he was going to have to reschedule.) I couldn't believe how much more time I had when I came home at 3:30 instead of 5:30. And for the two weeks leading up to the start of school, there were many days I came home at 8:30. Leaving at 3:15 was a completely foreign experience. And I liked it.

My parents instilled in me a strong work ethic. My only-child status ensures that I am a perfectionist who is not satisfied unless I have plans and materials in place at least 2 weeks out from today and that everything has to be done with complete excellence. The painful losses during the last year gave me an excuse to work like a manic woman so I didn't have to deal with all of the emotions and ups-and-downs of the last 18 months.

But I am getting to a place where I want more - or is it less?

I want to be productive and I want to do my work with excellence, but I also want to have a life. I want to have time with my family and time to pursue my hobbies, and time to actually sit down and read a book - something I seemed to have a lot more time for before I started working as a librarian, ironically enough.

Maybe, once I get "on top" of things at school and get back into the routine of my work, I'll enjoy the freedom that comes from leaving at 3:15 more often.

SAVOR: A Break

I thought I had managed this earlier this summer! I thought I had already adjusted my plans for what work I was going to get done at school over break.

But it's July. There's only about 4.5 weeks of summer vacation left. I'd like to spend at least half of it away from the school. The only way to do that is to whittle down my to do list yet again.

Sounds easy enough. But I was so emotionally invested in my list, the idea of ignoring some of those major tasks made me feel physically ill. I was a wreck. I needed someone to come in and look objectively at my list and help me prioritize. What was funny was that I used to do that for  other people! I had to shake myself and apply those skills to my own situation.

I wrote out all of the tasks I wanted to do this summer. Then I prioritized them based on what tasks were most important and what tasks could be easily done and checked off. I noted which ones had to be done at school and which could be done at home. I flagged what things had to be done before school starts.

After some journaling and praying and wrestling with that list, I finally started feeling better about the whole thing. I let myself enjoy the idea of a couple weeks completely away from school, even if I was still doing some school tasks at home. So far, it's going pretty well. It's not going to be perfect - I know I will be frustrated about some of the things that don't get done. But for now, I think I can handle that. I'll just SAVOR the look on my son's face when I told him our two weeks off were looking like a real possibility. He threw his hands up in the air and cheered. I have to make this break happen for him. This is his summer, too, and we both need to just "be" for awhile before we head back into a new school year.