On my drive home from work today, my head was swimming with the laundry list of things that had to get done. As I tried to sort through the mess in my mind, which is also backed up using Remember the Milk, I realized that mathematically speaking, there is no possible way to get it all done. I honestly don’t know how some people do it…and I don’t even have kids yet! How in the world do we balance it all?
My life is a lot like this tree that stands in front of our house. The tree is starting to look great and it was only planted last year, but the weeds around it are getting out of control. The tree is growing pretty much on it’s own and seems to need little tending. But the weeds are just growing out of control and are becoming more of a nuisance every day.
I get up at 6:30. I make breakfast, coffee and I usually try to make lunch for the day. I try to leave by 7:20 to make it to work by 8:00, though I’m usually a little late as 476 is wrought with traffic for the morning commute. I spend the next 9 hours at work, with an hour for lunch…sometimes. And then I’m blessed with a meager, maybe 4 hours after my commute home to get everything else done, maybe 6 if I don’t mind being tired.
In that remaining 4-6 hours I have to try and figure out how to do all of the things I want to do (the tree) and all of the things I need to do (the weeds). I need to do laundry and put away laundry, clean up the house a little bit and figure out what to do for dinner. Maybe I need to go grocery shopping, and the dogs need to get walked every night–thankfully we have a dog walker for the mornings and I should probably go to the gym.
I’m trying to blog daily, and I’m trying to teach myself about things like wordpress, php, html and css. I have a pile of books I’m determined to read, though who knows when. Did I mention that all of this should happen before my fiancee comes home at around 8:00pm usually, which means that the 4-6 hours, is really more like 2 hours. When she gets home I want to spend time with her, talk to her, hear about her day and rub her shoulders but the back of my brain is dragging at me, constantly yammering on in my ear about the to-do list that seems to grow until it branches off and sprouts a new to-do list that begins to grow.
How do we do it all? I’m amazed when I hear about people working 2 jobs and raising 3 kids as a single parent. I’m a 29 year old guy with 1 job and no kids and a fiancee who takes half the load of it all. Man, life can be tough sometimes. I know one thing, it’s friday and I just want to kick back and relax…what are the chances I’ll put away that laundry? It’s ok I guess I’ll just do it monday….riiiiight.