My life is ridiculously uncomplicated and simple. Good thing that’s the way I like it. I am quite curious about people who are always on the go and rushing to and fro. I’m curious about what it is they are doing and if they are enjoying it. Nothing wrong with being busy of course assuming that’s the way you like it. So how about it? What’s keeping you so busy?
First, I should probably qualify my status, then we can go from there. At the height of this school year, I had all AP classes, I was involved with half a dozen clubs, I attended meetings on 4 out of 5 days days a week, I had numerous activities I had to plan/execute (from a beauty pagaent to a Homecoming parade), I usually tutored someone pro bono for atleast an hour on a lot of days, then I of course had to spend most of my time with the social life, and the rest on the SDMB.
I was never stressed - doing multiple things at once constantly is just what I do. Sometimes I do it to keep me from realizing I don’t yet have a purpose in life, and other times I am working towards finding one. Life’s too short to not be living, so I generally try to do everything I can do without killing myself or someone else.
M-F. Wake up at 7:00 am. Rush to get ready. Leave the house at 7:25 am. Hour long commute. Arrive at work 8:25 am. Work straight through the day with no lunch as a consultant. Leave sharply at 5:00 pm to get my 3 year old daughter at day care. Arrive at day care at 5:57 pm most days. They close promptly at 6:00 so I am glad I have 3 minutes leeway.
Take her home. Our house was half destroyed last May at part of it was leveled and rebuilt while we lived in a hotel. Work on a project such as exterior painting or building walkways or patios until 7:30. Feed my daughter dinner. My wife works a late schedule and is pregnant and she gets home at 8:00 pm. We have 45 minutes of family time where we clean up any house mess together. My wife and daughter go to bed at 9:00 pm. I paint, do construction projects, and machine maintenance until 11 when I go to bed. Repeat.
On weekends, Saturday means work from dawn till dark from anything from massive burning to taking down large trees to repairing stone walls to putting up sheds. Sunday is church and church commitments. Fill that in with misc. work between time.
OTOH, I take breaks every few hours and post to the SDMB. It is a pretty good life because I know everything I do is semi-permanent and I can see the result of my labor. It is also working for myself and I have pride. I have a smart, beautiful, funny daughter and a house that most in the Boston area would consider far beyond our considerable means.
I have had times where I have had considerable free time and I enjoyed it. OTOH, I love my commute because I make custom CD’s for myself and learn to sing the way the artists do. I love working with the land and our acreage gives me the opportunity to be a small time farmer on the weekends. Both my mother and FIL are extremely successful because they love what they do so I try to follow that and make work recreation.
I’ll tell you what’s keeping me busy. I am a chronic volunteer. I volunteer for extracurricular stuff all the damn time. Stonebow hates me for it.
We belong to the SCA, so I volunteered to be the Minister of Children for the group. Then I volunteered to organize an event. Then I volunteered to organize a bigger event. At other groups events I volunteer to teach, or judge, or just general helping out of stuff. I volunteer to cook, bring snacks, and take part in SCA educational Demos.
At work, I volunteered to weed the library storage rooms. I volunteered to lead the school’s Sunshine Committee*… Two years in a row. I volunteered for the Media and Technology Committee, the Discipline Committee, the Teacher Advisory Committee. I volunteered to organize the school dance, the PPT for the retirement parties, and the programs for two book fairs. I volunteered to write two grants, and ten biographical essays about my colleagues. I am three quarters of the way through my graduate work in School Media and Technology.
I have three sons, 15, 12, and 4. The 15 year old has a new girlfriend every month, and places to be. The 12 year old has a new cool hobby every month, and places to be. The 4 year old had pneumonia and spent a week in the hospital in March, so now he’s got places to be, too (namely the doctor’s office, because I am paranoid now for every little cough). My grandmother is in and out of the hospital with heart problems, so I need to visit her. My mother is computer illiterate and has just started a new job that demands some fairly high level competencies, so I’m trying to help bring her up to speed.
I have considered looking into a sparsely furnished room, complete with padding at some point in the near future.
I have taken to sitting on my hands and biting my lips at any meetings I attend for fear of my husband divorcing me.
Shit. I was so busy I forgot to explain what a Sunshine Committee is. Basically, it’s me (and a couple other teachers) organizing all the wedding and baby showers, potluck luncheons, and such at school. It also involves making certain that any staff member who has been hospitalized or lost a family member receives a plant/flowers/card/balloons.
I’m exhausted just reading about what you folks are accomplishing. I’m going to bed. I’ll respond in more detail tomorrow as I do have a couple questions. But like I said. I’m beat. I wonder how many naps I’m going to need tomorrow after reading all the other busy people’s posts.
Night!
Since you asked here is my schedule:
On Mondays and Wednesdays I wake up at 9 a.m. I leave the house at 9:45 and get to college in time for my 11:05 class. School ends at 1:45 p.m. so I get home at around 3 p.m. I eat lunch and leave the house to go to work at 3:30. I work till 10 p.m., get home, read the SDMB, shower and go to sleep at 2 a.m.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have school from 12:30 – 3:10 p.m. Then when I get home I do my homework, read SDMB, shower and go to sleep.
Fridays and Saturdays I have to work from 4 p.m. till 12 a.m. In the mornings I catch up with whatever is on my Tivo (god bless Tivo). After I get home at around 12:30 a.m., I read SDMB, shower and go to sleep.
Sundays I do more homework. Sometimes I get to go out, but lately I haven’t had time for that.
This is more of the “I wish people would leave me alone” schedule, rather than the “I have to keep busy or I will hyperventilate” schedule.
Work during the day.
Teaching Taekwondo during the evening.
Making a movie on the weekends.
The usual stuff.
Monday through Friday - get up 5 am, out the door by 6, at school by 6:20 where I work non-stop (with a 20 minute lunch break) until 3 or so when I leave school. Typically have some sort of errands to do after school, which gets me home by 4. Then, as I am a first-year teacher with no lesson plans to fall back on, I typically do about 2 or 3 hours of work at home to get ready for upcoming days of school.
Weekends are for planning the wedding and looking for a house to buy with Only Mostly Dead. That’s also when we clean the apartment and do major errands. Plus, we often both have work to do over the weekends too, so that’s pretty much our life.
I have full time job at an academic library Monday through Friday, and I go to grad school at night. Plus I volunteer for one shift at a different library’s reference desk as a favor to a friend on the weekends. I’m also an amateur linguist, and I study languages on the nights I don’t have classes/homework/projects. I also study on the weekends, and every morning before my shift begins, and on my lunch hour. And I’m currently teaching myself web programming. My goal is to finish school before I’m 40. After that, I’m going to divide my time between getting back into shape, concentrating on languages and web programming, and convincing my wife to take the divorce lawyer off of speed dial.
All that along with the Dope keeps me hopping.
I work full time, go to school full time, keep my house clean, clothes washed, fridge stocked, and try to stay sane in the interim. It keeps me pretty busy.
Didn’t plan for it to be this way, things just piled up this year (and last).
Two kids
Household
Fulltime job (programmer)
Parttime job (flight instructor)
Master’s Degree (MS - 15 hrs/year)
Seems to take up most of my available time. I fully expect to relax some after graduation (Dec).
To the outside eye, I am not busy. I am a mostly-SAHM with a part-time job.
M-F, 7-10 am I work; the commute is about 30 minutes each way. I also throw in another 10 hours at another site during the week, and cover any absent staff, depending on my husband’s schedule.
My toddler takes up a lot of time. Even though he’s one of those content, happy kids, he is still very demanding of time with Mommy. The 12-year-old isn’t nearly so demanding, but still needs feeding and homework help.
I’ve been scouting out houses to buy, and have looked at about 20 in the past week. As the husband is self-employed, it’s more important that he stays home to work while I go vet out potential (and then he can’t say “I LOVE IT LET’S BUY IT” for things I hate. He only sees what I can see as a good bet.) homes for us to spend the next 5-10 years living in.
Add to that - and mind you, I only work a part-time schedule - the general tasks of cleaning a three-bedroom home, cooking dinner, doing dishes and laundry for a four-person family, raising the kids - and I’m a pretty busy person. I can’t remember how on earth I got everything done when I was a single parent (of one child) with a full-time career AND was in musical theatre with three to four rehearsals in a week.
We have a joke in the party that you can attend meetings and then stagger out hours later, on six committees with no idea how you got there. You extrapolate from there.
Ok, got up at 8:00am and fed the cat. Went back to bed until 9:00am. That’s one nap already today! You really are some busy busy busy people. Parenting, school while working, volunteering, home improvement, movies…looks like I need to get a hobby or something.
ZebraShaSha. What are AP classes? Accelerated Progress? Apple Pie? mmmmmm pie…
Shagnasty. You get to burn stuff? Cool!
Way back when dirt was young I was a full time university student and worked part time. Looking back it didn’t seem that busy as I also found time for the gym. Oh well, keep em coming folks I might just get motivated to find something to do.
Full time job, with 45 minute commute- out the door by 8:30. Home anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30, depending on how the day went. Do this five days a week.
Part time job, with hour commute- out the door by 7:30. Volunteer a few hours counseling students in the afternoons. Home between 5:30 and 6. Do this on the two days normal people would take off.
Two hour medical visit once a week, with a 45 minute commute.
Building a house. Try to work on small projects, or just cleaning up the worst of the construction messes.
Work on grading papers/writing lectures for part time job.
Must walk/train one year old ACD puppy at least an hour a day, or he goes insane and eats the house. Take time with other puppies so they don’t get jealous.
Visit with husband, who I think still lives with me.
Until last June, I was also a full-time student and doing a twenty-hours-a-week internship. I don’t really remember what it was like before this horrid schedule, and I hate it.
Up at 4 am, out the door at quarter to five, on the train at ten after, at my desk at 6:30, where I work through both breaks and usually part of lunch. I get off usually at quarter to four, sometimes I stay til four. 4:10 I’m on the bus, 4:35 on the train, 5:35 back in town. FiL picks me up from the station, then we go to pick up MiL. Home around 7:15. I make dinner, eat, hit the weights, clean the catboxes, take a shower, then back to bed until The Highwayman gets home from school (11pmish). Feed him, chat a little, back to bed.
Train time is for reading and writing. The weekends are spent catching up on the housework and sleeping. They try to make me work saturdays. The last time they tried, I got into a car wreck the friday before and got out of it. They haven’t asked since. . .
I figure after this work schedule, going back to school full-time with a 70 mile commute will be a breeze.
As FaerieBeth said, I volunteer a lot.
First off, I have a husband, two kids, pets and a house that require care, plus a part-time job. I’ve been subbing at work lately for a fellow teacher who lost her mother suddenly and hasn’t been able to work.
Then there’s this volunteer EMT thing I started doing last year, which takes up loads of time, plus training and meetings. As a member of the firehouse, I also have to help out with our hall that we rent out (we have two, actually; a formal one and a casual one), and I’m in charge of birthday parties for kids at the firehouse. We have about one or two every weekend.
Add in my son’s various sports (soccer just ended, but baseball just started), and my daughter’s college quest and her part-time job and school activities, and sometimes I’m nothing more than a cab driver.
AP = Advanced Placement classes, typically college level classes taken in high school for college credit. You get the college credit by passing an exam at the end of course. Exams are graded on a scale of 1 - 5. Most colleges want at least a three to get the credit.
Most of the time, I’m busy with my work, and as that involves a lot of travelling around the city and long hours in libraries and archives, I’m not home much. If I am home, I’m still working, cranking out reports.
When I’m not doing that, I do community stuff. Local historical society, Lions Club, answering calls for help from local groups I know, doing guest speeches at gatherings and clubs.
When I’m not doing either of these things, I’m trying to give friends as much quality time as possible. Both IRL and online.
In between I sleep, eat, do the dishes and maybe read graphic novels and watch telly/movies.
The damn scheduler fills up fast.