Sorry I have been so quiet since Issue 1 completed! I have been preoccupied between work and graduate school. To answer the question before it is asked, “how do you manage your relationships between work and college full time?”
Carefully.
I wrote about this “feast-famine” balance in an earlier blog but I have to remind myself to keep at it. How do you manage all of these things that are equally important? Now it’s more a matter of not making the time equally that something isn’t important, it’s a matter of you can only do so much at once. If I am working full time, that’s my day. If I can sneak in some homework or schedule time to go to lunch with Shep, then cool. If not, then I am fully invested in my work at work.
When I make it through our lovely H-1 traffic in the afternoon from work, I have maybe 4-5 hours to work on course work, eat and get ready for the next day at work. If I have over 1000 pages of reading to do for one course, a 12 page paper for another course and then 2 chapters, a quiz, a discussion board with responses and a project write-up… then some things aren’t happening in those 4-5 hours. It seems suffocating but this is why it is better to parcel out that time amongst all the tasks throughout the week instead of stacking them all on one or two days.
How do you make time for your husband?
Well, while all of this is going on we still need to a) eat, b) walk the dogs, and c) get groceries. I generally pay for most of the household expenses so I go on most grocery runs (Shep can also do it but this now that he is working again). It’s not anything grandiose, it’s just short trips in the car to wherever with my husband. But, we are spending time together.
Sometimes, he’ll study for his certifications (or whatever) downstairs near my desk, with a movie on for background noise as we both do our respective things. It’s okay for us to be in the same house and not be constantly touching, talking or what not.
You learn to appreciate all of the small moments together when you are never home with your loved ones. Spend a moment chatting about the news, broadly about days, studying or mad schemes. A trip to Home Depot for something mundane as fencing to keep the dogs from digging out can be future planning for that S&M themed dungeon basement we might eventually have in the house we buy when we settle down.
Yes, my family is important to me. My professional development and education is important to me. I like my job and what I am studying. As one of my favorite celebrities, Dwayne Johnson has stated (me paraphrasing), “Be the hardest worker in the room. You have less than $7 in your pocket and the rent’s due.”
I am responsibility for my own success, only I can push myself to be the best me there is to make my future and my family’s future better. I want to be the best me for myself. If I can’t do it for my own good, then I have no business trying to do it for anyone else. I have been in that dark place where I was trapped and bound by own choices, things didn’t get better until I acknowledged that I had a problem and then fought my way out.
If you take nothing else away today, savor the time you have for your loved ones and make some room to tell them that you love them. If all you can manage is a text message then go for it. Just remember that are multiple ways to express your affection for someone, committing time is only one of them but it tends to go the most unnoticed at times.
Carefully.
I wrote about this “feast-famine” balance in an earlier blog but I have to remind myself to keep at it. How do you manage all of these things that are equally important? Now it’s more a matter of not making the time equally that something isn’t important, it’s a matter of you can only do so much at once. If I am working full time, that’s my day. If I can sneak in some homework or schedule time to go to lunch with Shep, then cool. If not, then I am fully invested in my work at work.
When I make it through our lovely H-1 traffic in the afternoon from work, I have maybe 4-5 hours to work on course work, eat and get ready for the next day at work. If I have over 1000 pages of reading to do for one course, a 12 page paper for another course and then 2 chapters, a quiz, a discussion board with responses and a project write-up… then some things aren’t happening in those 4-5 hours. It seems suffocating but this is why it is better to parcel out that time amongst all the tasks throughout the week instead of stacking them all on one or two days.
How do you make time for your husband?
Well, while all of this is going on we still need to a) eat, b) walk the dogs, and c) get groceries. I generally pay for most of the household expenses so I go on most grocery runs (Shep can also do it but this now that he is working again). It’s not anything grandiose, it’s just short trips in the car to wherever with my husband. But, we are spending time together.
Sometimes, he’ll study for his certifications (or whatever) downstairs near my desk, with a movie on for background noise as we both do our respective things. It’s okay for us to be in the same house and not be constantly touching, talking or what not.
You learn to appreciate all of the small moments together when you are never home with your loved ones. Spend a moment chatting about the news, broadly about days, studying or mad schemes. A trip to Home Depot for something mundane as fencing to keep the dogs from digging out can be future planning for that S&M themed dungeon basement we might eventually have in the house we buy when we settle down.
Yes, my family is important to me. My professional development and education is important to me. I like my job and what I am studying. As one of my favorite celebrities, Dwayne Johnson has stated (me paraphrasing), “Be the hardest worker in the room. You have less than $7 in your pocket and the rent’s due.”
I am responsibility for my own success, only I can push myself to be the best me there is to make my future and my family’s future better. I want to be the best me for myself. If I can’t do it for my own good, then I have no business trying to do it for anyone else. I have been in that dark place where I was trapped and bound by own choices, things didn’t get better until I acknowledged that I had a problem and then fought my way out.
If you take nothing else away today, savor the time you have for your loved ones and make some room to tell them that you love them. If all you can manage is a text message then go for it. Just remember that are multiple ways to express your affection for someone, committing time is only one of them but it tends to go the most unnoticed at times.
