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The last two weeks have been school holidays, which was intended to mean instead of losing ~2 hours a day to getting E to and from school I would be spending that time at work. Unfortunately for the first week a mild-but-enough-to-mean-stay-home head cold struck the human members of the household (I was still able to work from home, but at decreased efficiency) and this week even with the boys visiting mornings have been really hard. Back to not being able to get myself out of bed hard, compounded by what I have come to realise is a bad case of revenge procrastination keeping me awake on my phone until well after I should be asleep.
So this post is about control, or the lack thereof which I have been wrestling with (and losing). Arguably despite /feeling/ in control of my life for much of it I have very rarely actually tried to exert any, being mostly comfortable with where the flow of things took me. I may have regrets...
Right now my timetable is dictated in ways I'm sure many readers are all to familiar with, and I am struggling to adapt.
- get E to school
- morning errands if any
- sometimes I take a nap in the car for an hour or two at this point
- work, sometimes breaking for a nap when I go to move the car
- Get E from school
- afternoon errands or back to work. I'm usually properly awake for this period
- home to help prepare dinner
- clean up after dinner and other chores
- feel too drained to do anything productive I may have intended or anything interactive eg spend quality time with my wife
- go to bed
- spend up to two hours playing on phone until my brain finally decides to shut down
Weekends aren't too dissimilar; I may be able to sleep in without guilt but I invariably need to head into the office to make up my hours for the week (often I get some of my most focused work done at the weekends with no-one else there anyway) and try to catch up with the house cleaning (which I am constantly behind on). These things demand my attention and energy leaving me no spoons to, when I actually have some discretionary time, actually work on any of the many things I /want/ to get completed; more of the household chores, photo galleries, scanning photos, cleanup of digital and physical detritus, cleaning the car, cataloguing my RPG collection prior to storage / disposal, reading something which isn't related to work or current affairs, writing journal posts, /reaching out to and catching up with people/, rp/boardgaming ... to list just a few.
Instead I mostly spend time either napping (if I am lucky) or playing one of Star Realms (phone, quick, easy, procrastination) or Path of Exile (PC, not quick, not easy at the level I am playing) depending on how much time I think I actually have. Both usually give me a false but comforting sense of succeeding at something. Both are something it feels like I "chose" to do, even if it was a counter-productive decision that I am later going to criticise myself for.
In truth I know that I'm rarely actually choosing to do these things, instead some part of me is choosing /not/ to do something else. I don't even feel in control of these choices :(
Money is another big issue. We have enough to manage comfortably week-on-week with even a few small luxuries, but on the maths we should actually be making back lost ground (discounting rent which is coming out of Dalwood funds). Instead almost every week when I expect to actually have something spare to tuck away against emergencies or even for the big cluster of bills at the beginning of the month I am crushed when either something unexpected which needs paying for crops up - be it a medical bill, meal out or replacement item for something which has worn out; or something crops up which takes me away from work for more hours than I manage to make up.
(This week I have managed to make my hours despite having the boys here, which is a minor miracle, but it is mostly down to a public holiday (on which I worked and put the hours on my timesheet for the previous week - the only reason I made my hours for that week) and the fact that they really didn't seem to want to go anywhere or do anything. We managed to organise beyond a trip to MM playground. There was repeated discussion of a swimming pool trip but it never eventuated.)
I have been determinedly not spending my small "allowance" on anything but essentials to build up some sort of reserve but also I don't feel, again on the numbers, that I /should/ have to deny myself in that fashion.
I should not, in fact, on the numbers in terms of
- hours in the week,
- money and
- the amount I currently seem to be capable of doing (based on the past few months of term-time)
...be having to spend all my control spoons on denying myself things in order to meet my work and home obligations.
It is counter-productive and it is leading to self-destructive behaviours.
I've identified the probelm, but I'm still not sure what to do about it.
Today I eventually made the decision not to go into work and instead focus on some of the things that I wanted to get done around the house/garden before our flat inspection at the end of next week; and prepping for that is something which is going to chew time this week but as long as nothing unexpected happens [hah! I have just been reminded that E starts evening art lessons this week] I have a plan for what to do on which day, in hopefully managable chunks.
It would be nice if things would go to plan for a week or two. It might make me feel that my plans mean something.
So this post is about control, or the lack thereof which I have been wrestling with (and losing). Arguably despite /feeling/ in control of my life for much of it I have very rarely actually tried to exert any, being mostly comfortable with where the flow of things took me. I may have regrets...
Right now my timetable is dictated in ways I'm sure many readers are all to familiar with, and I am struggling to adapt.
- get E to school
- morning errands if any
- sometimes I take a nap in the car for an hour or two at this point
- work, sometimes breaking for a nap when I go to move the car
- Get E from school
- afternoon errands or back to work. I'm usually properly awake for this period
- home to help prepare dinner
- clean up after dinner and other chores
- feel too drained to do anything productive I may have intended or anything interactive eg spend quality time with my wife
- go to bed
- spend up to two hours playing on phone until my brain finally decides to shut down
Weekends aren't too dissimilar; I may be able to sleep in without guilt but I invariably need to head into the office to make up my hours for the week (often I get some of my most focused work done at the weekends with no-one else there anyway) and try to catch up with the house cleaning (which I am constantly behind on). These things demand my attention and energy leaving me no spoons to, when I actually have some discretionary time, actually work on any of the many things I /want/ to get completed; more of the household chores, photo galleries, scanning photos, cleanup of digital and physical detritus, cleaning the car, cataloguing my RPG collection prior to storage / disposal, reading something which isn't related to work or current affairs, writing journal posts, /reaching out to and catching up with people/, rp/boardgaming ... to list just a few.
Instead I mostly spend time either napping (if I am lucky) or playing one of Star Realms (phone, quick, easy, procrastination) or Path of Exile (PC, not quick, not easy at the level I am playing) depending on how much time I think I actually have. Both usually give me a false but comforting sense of succeeding at something. Both are something it feels like I "chose" to do, even if it was a counter-productive decision that I am later going to criticise myself for.
In truth I know that I'm rarely actually choosing to do these things, instead some part of me is choosing /not/ to do something else. I don't even feel in control of these choices :(
Money is another big issue. We have enough to manage comfortably week-on-week with even a few small luxuries, but on the maths we should actually be making back lost ground (discounting rent which is coming out of Dalwood funds). Instead almost every week when I expect to actually have something spare to tuck away against emergencies or even for the big cluster of bills at the beginning of the month I am crushed when either something unexpected which needs paying for crops up - be it a medical bill, meal out or replacement item for something which has worn out; or something crops up which takes me away from work for more hours than I manage to make up.
(This week I have managed to make my hours despite having the boys here, which is a minor miracle, but it is mostly down to a public holiday (on which I worked and put the hours on my timesheet for the previous week - the only reason I made my hours for that week) and the fact that they really didn't seem to want to go anywhere or do anything. We managed to organise beyond a trip to MM playground. There was repeated discussion of a swimming pool trip but it never eventuated.)
I have been determinedly not spending my small "allowance" on anything but essentials to build up some sort of reserve but also I don't feel, again on the numbers, that I /should/ have to deny myself in that fashion.
I should not, in fact, on the numbers in terms of
- hours in the week,
- money and
- the amount I currently seem to be capable of doing (based on the past few months of term-time)
...be having to spend all my control spoons on denying myself things in order to meet my work and home obligations.
It is counter-productive and it is leading to self-destructive behaviours.
I've identified the probelm, but I'm still not sure what to do about it.
Today I eventually made the decision not to go into work and instead focus on some of the things that I wanted to get done around the house/garden before our flat inspection at the end of next week; and prepping for that is something which is going to chew time this week but as long as nothing unexpected happens [hah! I have just been reminded that E starts evening art lessons this week] I have a plan for what to do on which day, in hopefully managable chunks.
It would be nice if things would go to plan for a week or two. It might make me feel that my plans mean something.
