My three weeks of holiday end tomorrow. Little Miss and Big Mister will be back and we’ll be back to full-time homeschooling! I thought I would take stock of what I did and didn’t do for the last three weeks. Did I claw my way back into a healthy, normal adult life?
- I did meaningful work other than parenting and educating a child. Paid, too…
- I spent an average of 15 minutes a day on housework and errands instead of well over an hour.
- I stopped reading books as a kind of mental pacifier and began reading them for interesting content again.
- I got to the gym for an average of 1.5 hours every day. The part I needed most was the stretching. I seize up completely if I don’t stretch.
- I got to hang out with some friends as an individual instead of one of the family group.
On the other hand….
- I did not really recover anything resembling a sense of self. This is bad news, as I’d always manged to do this on my little holidays before. On the other hand, I did stop feeling completely obliterated.
- I did not become wildly enthusiastic about any new projects, or even about the various events that are already scheduled in my next few months. That’s also bad news, and I always had before. Yesterday, I toyed with the idea of beginning to investigate ways in which I could pursue my art history research interests at some time in the future… right! Beginning to investigate future pursuits is an activity I know I’ll be giving up starting tomorrow.
- I totally failed to make headway on any significant tasks other than the paid work project.
- Not only did I leave my existent bad habits right where they were, I even gravitated to my natural student-like lifestyle again, which in my case means dining on pizza while watching Red Dwarf at 3am, then getting up at about 11am. Actually, I might transfer that to the positive side of this little assessment.
I’m not sure if I’m quite breaking even, but what can I do? I’m looking forward to seeing my two kids again, anyway. Three weeks is a long time without them. I just wish they were a bit more autonomous. And I do mean both of them!