Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 5 seconds
I realized today as my boss and I failed to meet in a phone call that we are jugglers.
We’re trying to get a heck of a lot of work done while also managing family time.
Here are the things I am trying to balance every day, always with some degree of failure I am willing to accept:
- Be there for my child when she says shen needs me
- Be there for my child when she needs me but doesn’t want to say
- Be there for my child when she doesn’t even know she needs me
- Get my fulltime work done (this is usually possible, because I’m fast, and had calmed down lately)
- Get my teaching work done (struggling with grading, but otherwise going well)
- Get my unpaid work done – presenting, writing, reviewing, meetings, webinars to learn, etc. This may seem like an extra burden in these times, but it nurtures my soul and I need it for my wellbeing. Both the learning and the giving. I’ll say no if I need to. I have skipped a few of the learning ones coz I sign up for too many and it’s not worth my time to stay in a boring one.
- Have fun time with my kid, both for our wellbeing and to help manage my kid’s screentime to something reasonable, whatever makes sense that day
- Manage my kid’s and my own physical activity
- Find spiritual time during Ramadan
- Find time for other family (calls, occasional physical distancing measures)
- Find time for friends (calls, very occasional physical distancing measures)
- Cooking and doing as much of it as possible with my child
- Chores and doing as little of it as possible. Getting help from husband and kid
- Downtime. Watching TV with family or reading
- Keeping up with Twitter and WhatsApp
- Keeping up with email (I spend much less time on it than usual and this magically results in fewer emails!)
- Find time for music coz it makes me feel good, esp w my family
- Find time to dance coz it makes me feel good, esp w my family
- Breathe
Today my kid and I made a pact to not touch our phones for about 4 hours. To do this, I had to wake up 4 hours before her to finish reading a thesis I’m examining tomorrow. We used those 4 hours to hang out, but also to do some glitter painting on an empty kitchen roll, some alumnium foil (don’t ask) and for her to make a beaded necklace while i worked on this colorful puzzle thingie. We sat next to each other and read a bit. We also spent some time watching this cool NetFlix edutainment show called Brainchild which a friend recommended. We binge watched today and yesterday and over iftar we finished watching the last available episode 😵😫 (this is my second day on NetFlix people!) then we watched this other show called Nailed It (which I love because its a baking competition which celebrates imperfection in baking, and the person who messes up worst in the first round gets an advantage in the second round!!! Messing up won’t make you win, but you get an advantage to help you do better nxt round) And the show inspired us to bake some cookies coz surely we would not do worse than the ppl on the show!!! Haha.
Then we took out our phones (this is like 6 or 7 hours later, not 4, but involved other electronics). I finished giving peer feedback on something, an article and some slides I was working on, and she managed to respond to texts from her friends and such.
Why am I chronicling all this? I don’t know. Feels like I juggled a lot today and it’s not even a school day!
Header image of Juggler from Pixabay
After reading @KateMfD ‘s post, I started a post describing “a precarious dance” that I left to do stuff. Had to smile to see “Jugglers” when I got a moment to sit again!
To answer your question “Why am I chronicling all this? I don’t know. Feels like I juggled a lot today and it’s not even a school day!” it is to remind us that we are not alone! Thank you for putting into words what I have been feeling, it helps. Thank goodness for writers!