The Plan for today WAS:
- Wake up hours before the kids to work on finances
- Get BOTH kids to school
- Spend TWO HOURS writing while Thomas is in school
- P/U Thomas & feed him lunch
- Put Thomas in rest/nap time
- Spend TWO HOURS writing
- P/U Ruthie and spend afternoon with kids
The way today is going down so far:
- Wake suddenly and before alarm – realize puppy is mauling me with “kisses” and crazy paws in the face
- Realize Thomas is in my bed, is woken (waken?) up by crazy puppy, gets excited about snow, wakes up Ruthie
- Stumble around the dark house looking for snow suits, which have been packed away since the conclusion of Snowpocalypse 2008
- Recover from jolted awakening just in time for kids to come back in and demand hot chocolate
- (oh look! it’s not even 7am, yet!)
- Finally feed kids breakfast and put them in front of the t.v. so I can work on finances.
- Stare at my computer, hesitating to dive into focused work while interruptions are inevitable
- Oh gee, reading blogs is a very interruption-friendly activity!
And this is where I shook it off, jumped in the shower, and got dressed down to my shoes.
On days like this when my morning doesn’t begin with a quiet moment to focus my thoughts and get some uninterrupted work done, I have a difficult time getting back on track again. Today I realize it’s because I spend the rest of the day trying to get back to that one activity I needed to do first thing – in the case of this morning, update my Quicken and print budget reports. Since the kids are awake and continually interrupting me, I get more and more frustrated that I can’t get this task done, and either lose my temper with them or spin my wheels in a forced attempt to make it happen. Or both.
Today I will try to reset. I will leave behind the notion that can get this task done right now, and move on to the next thing. I hope this will make me more productive today than I was yesterday when I had another morning that didn’t go according to the plan.
The challenge is, this task is now nagging me, haunting me, taunting me that it’s incomplete and hovering over me. What will you do about it? it says.
The answer? I don’t know. We’ll see how the day goes.