Never Enough Hours in a Day

I miss working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

With my new role at work, I'm now required to be in the office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. That means I don't get home until 5:30 or 6. That means I have a maximum of one hour to check my work e-mail and make sure no one needs a last minute question answered, change my clothes, check my personal e-mail, maybe do some writing for myself and, oh yeah, play with my son and talk to my husband before I have to start making dinner.

After dinner, I've got to make my lunch for the next day, pick out and potentially iron my clothes for work in the morning and set aside clothes and shoes for the gym, post something on my blog, maybe do a little writing and sometimes pay bills before it's time to read books and put my son to bed. And that's my favorite time of day, even when he's been nuts all evening and he's refusing to go to sleep, because we get to cuddle for a half hour.

By the time I sneak out of his bedroom between 9 and 9:30 after having dozed off at the foot of his bed, I've still got to get myself ready for bed and finish my other nightly chores before I settle in front of the computer around 10 or so to write until 11 or 11:30 or whenever I start to fall asleep sitting up.

I limit myself to 11:30, because I have to get up at 4:30 to go to the gym. Some people need six to eight hours, but I can function and sound somewhat intelligent with only five hours of sleep. I dream of skipping the gym and sleeping until 6 a.m., but the early morning is the only time I have left for exercise. My life is so sedentary between work and writing at home that I've got to get moving at least four days a week.

I have to get up at 4:30 to make it to the gym by 5 a.m. then home by 6:15 so I can get myself and my son dressed and out the door by 7:15. That gives me just enough time to drop him at preschool and make it to the office somewhere in the vicinity of 8 a.m.

It's exhausting just thinking about it. And it's amazing I'm able to string thoughts together for long enough periods of time to write a coherent story. I'm not a religious woman, but thank God for the weekends and a supportive husband.

I was just telling Jeff, "If there were 30 hours in a day and a six-day week with a two-day weekend, then I would get so much more done in a day." From behind the book from which he's tried to read more than two paragraphs at a time all night, he nodded and grunted in agreement as I do when he tries to ask me questions while I'm writing. Not only are we on the same page, we speak the same language.