If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m glad it’s Labor Day weekend, because I really need the break. August was a marginally better month than June and July — at least there were no car accidents and no one died — but it wasn’t the greatest. I’ll not rehash the whole lousy summer, but I do hope September is the month things finally get better.
And I’d tell you I’m so far behind on my blogging, I don’t even know what to do next. Finding enough time to blog is always an issue for me in the late summer and early fall, but it’s been worse than usual this year. The family’s needing a lot of time and the commute I took on when we moved in June just makes things different.
The drive is only 45 minutes door-to-door, but most of it is busy interstate driving, so it doesn’t have much decompression value. I don’t have much time before work to do internet stuff, as I have for most of the time I’ve been blogging. And when I get home it’s either homework time or dinner time. So, most nights, I’m not sitting down to the computer until well after 8 pm, and I’ve had to adjust my bedtime because I have to be up at least two hours before work time.
This is a serious lifestyle change. Up until June, my office was 15 minutes away, whether I walked or drove. It was just as fast to walk as to drive because the driving time was all about finding parking. So, most days I walked, and the 15-minute walk WAS good for decompression.
For most of the time I’ve been blogging, I’ve been able to maintain the productivity to blog mostly every day because I’ve been able to squeeze in an hour before work and/or an hour after, and when I needed to catch up, I could always stay up too late to get stuff done and catch up on my sleep the next night. Those two easy-to-come-by hours have simply evaporated. I’m dealing with a serious crunch here, and I don’t know an easy solution.
I know most bloggers work day jobs and lots of people have busy schedules.  I’m certainly not claiming to be unique or looking for sympathy here. I’m just perplexed by a problem I’ve not had to deal with up to this point. I managed so well for so long, and I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve just spent the last two years making. But I’m not sure at this point that this is going to get better once things settle down toward the end of the month. I’m afraid it’s here to stay, which means that if I want to keep blogging at the pace I’m accustomed to, I’m going to need to figure out something to let go in order to free up the time.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you September is off to a pretty good start for me. In fact if it weren’t for the problem of not knowing how I’m going to recover my blogging time, it would be off to a better start than any month I’ve had since April. I gave most of the day yesterday to my grandson. My wife and stepdaughter have been sick (there’s a nasty virus going around), so they slept in. I made the boy breakfast and then we goofed around for an hour or so. I’d intended to give him some time early in the day and then get to work, but we ended up taking most of the day.
He wanted me to show him how to make paper snowflakes by cutting and folding paper. Our first attempt produced two strips of paper with three identical holes each. The holes were perfectly positioned to turn them into masks, so we each colored one with crayons, added string, and took photos of one another in the cool homemade masks.
I posted about the snowflake thing on Facebook, and my friend Rose, who’s blogged here on more than one occasion, found me a snowflake tutorial. It took me a few tries to get the folding just right, but it worked, and we spent a couple of hours making snowflakes. The grandson is thinking he wants to make a bunch of them and glitter them up to use as Christmas decorations.
Aside from that, I was up and down, in and out of the house most of the day with him, and before bedtime, he ended up showing me how to play a video game because he wants me to X-Box with him. It was an all around good day, but I never found an hour or two to sit down and do any actual blogging — the internet time yesterday was all 15-minute sessions in which I either scanned comment threads for a few minutes or did quick Facebook posts.
He’s out with another of his grandfathers today — that’s a regular Sunday thing — and everyone else is in bed, so I’m going to see how far along I can get with the blogging between now and 3 p.m. today.
Have a great Labor Day if you’re in the U.S., and a fantastic week if you aren’t.
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