This week went a little more smoothly, especially the part where I come to the end of it and organize for the next week. It's not even noon on Saturday and I have figured out the menus for the week, balanced my checkbook, and gone to all three grocery stores. It's not a competition or anything. I look forward to the weekend as a time to do less and be less under the gun. So if I haven't finished this part of the process I have it to look forward to, which I don't. Now it's done.
These organizational processes are partly a way to clear my head. If I don't do them, some part of me will anyway, all the time. And that background chatter keeps me from relaxing for one thing. It also keeps me from focusing my energy on real problems. This applies to the work I do with Heather as well. If some of it isn't just routine (e.g. going through the chapters of a workbook week after week) it's too much to organize. I don't want to create brand new lesson plans every week for four academic subjects. That would kill me! Not that I haven't tried, mind you.
I think I'm probably pretty late in the game with this stuff anyway. I usually am. It takes me a while to take in all the details of what I need to do and then stream line them so they make sense to me. At any rate, this year I have made improvements.
I should add that none of this has actually led to joy for me. My original ambition two years ago was to find my way to happiness. It does seem to be rather hard to do if your path is cluttered with jobs and responsibilities for which you have no plan other than to stop each time you bump into one and deal with it. What a mess that has been. The jobs often overlap, take a variety of knowledge and creativity to solve and if I planned ahead I could scoop a bunch of them up at once and take care of them. But joy? Satisfaction, maybe. A reduction in stress, maybe. But not joy yet. That will take more time.
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