I wanted to try something different. I think that the main reason I’ve been largely inactive on my website is that I don’t always know what to say. Part of me shudders to even consider writing this, as I’m wondering if it’s TMI. Writing is a large part of my life, but sometimes other parts of life prevent me from making any significant progress in writing.
A lot of the other things that consume my time are pretty mundane and not worth sharing as anything more than a small mention (like chores, driving locally, and waiting). But some of my other activities might be of interest to more than just me. So, I’m considering adding in some updates on those things.
I’d like to say that I have a “typical” day, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Most days, I try to get writing in before everything else so that I definitely can write. But I’m not a morning person and early mornings are my only guaranteed time. By evening, I’m too tired to write coherently.
On Mondays through Thursdays, my daughter goes to public school. We are down to only a single vehicle in the house at the moment, so I end up dropping my husband and brother off most of these mornings and pick everyone up later. My son is homeschooled, but around half of his work can be done independently. I help him when he needs me and I work on everything else I can around this.
More time than I’d like goes to household chores, inventory, and grocery shopping. Another chunk of time goes to trying to keep up with email and my social media accounts, though I get behind on those more often than not. I also try to keep up with deals to share on book recommendations, mostly for my newsletter, but sometimes here and on social media.
I’m the main person who cooks in my household, so a lot of time is spent in the kitchen. I like to be health conscious, so despite sometimes feeling lazy and getting takeout or easy to make processed foods, I typically cook everything from scratch. Currently, I care for 2 cultures. One is a sourdough starter I use to make all my bread. And the other is a yogurt starter. Aside from food, I make soap, lotion bars, and chapstick for my household.
That makes up most of my non-writing related time. The rest falls into more of a self-care category, something I probably should spend more time with.
For self-care, I will spend time on one of my numerous hobbies. Though mostly, I read. Believe it or not, I will usually count my homemade projects as self-care because I find it fun and relaxing most of the time.
After school on weekdays, I pick up my daughter. Usually, I have to wait at least an hour before anyone else is off work. I try to plan dinner around when I’m expecting to pick up my husband and brother. Most of my time after school is out is spent between dinner, making sure the kids take care of their tasks, and cleaning up. After the the kids go to bed, I spend an hour or two either reading or watching a show with my husband before I turn in for the night.
Weekends are the least predictable. Fridays tend to be the hardest day for me to get anything done. With both kids home and nobody else here to typically help me, most of the time it seems like my whole day is consumed with putting out fires between the kids. Saturday and Sunday, I usually at least have my husband home. These days have the largest variance on what is happening that day. The weekend is the most likely time for us to do something fun as a family, though the options are currently very limited. We sometimes go to Phoenix or Flagstaff for shopping. Or sometimes we go to Winslow to visit family.
When we don’t have plans for the weekend, sometimes I can get more writing done than the rest of the week combined. But other times, my husband needs the time for his ventures, so I don’t really accomplish anything.
The other day, I made chapstick and I thought to take pictures, so my next non-book related post will be about that.
I hope this wasn’t more personal than you’d like, but I want to have more interaction with my readers, so I’m trying this out as a way to hopefully connect. I’d love to hear if you have anything to say about any of this. Is there anything specific I mentioned that you’d like to hear more about?
