Busy, Busy

Life is busy these days.  Mostly work.  Lots and lots of work.  Long hours traveling as well as time at the office.  It’s good to be busy and it’s really good to have a job. 

Time has to be reorganized and reallocated.   Finances also need to be recalculated, new budgets figured and expenses cut where possible. 

It’s been a long time since I had to work two jobs.  In fact, as I think about it, almost exactly 10 years have passed since I first took on a second job.  We had just gone through a messy financial situation with a business that had gone down the drain and ended up with a lot of debt.  But through it all, our credit remained good and we were able to buy a house. 

By renting out the basement and building furniture in the garage, we were able to make ends meet and keep our creditors at bay.  Suddenly we feel as poor and busy as we did then.  We do have the little soap business, which, so far has paid for itself.  But it’s becoming clear that a second job is inevitable. 

Furniture manufacturing is again surfacing as the best option:  I already have all the tools, I have the space, my dad is willing to help, and it’s something I’m good at.  It makes sense and it’s a good way to make money in all the spare minutes I have in a day. 

All the spare minutes – haha.  I’ll have to find some.  I think writing has to go.  Not completely; I’d go crazy quick if I let writing go completely.  But almost completely for sure. 

Well my few minutes are spent.  Time to get on a plane.  Busy, busy.

Busy Busy

First Posted May 17th, 2009

I’m not exactly sure what it is about May that’s so different. But different, it most definitely is. This week we have gone to bed after midnight on several occasions. This in itself is not particularly amazing. What’s unusual is what we were doing that kept us up so late. Just last night, after trying to get out to the garden all week, we finally made it, well past midnight, flashlights on, and planted our seeds and store bought plants into the ground. Our neighbors already think we are whacked. This just confirmed it for some of them. It also confirmed for me just how crazy things are these days.

May is always the second busiest month of the year, beat out only just barely by December. December, however, we do to ourselves (a subject I’m sure to speak more on toward the end of the year). But May is another story. May we have no control over. May has a life of its own.

As an example of a typical day in May, Saturday’s schedule included just five main things: Soccer games, plant the garden, go to party for a niece, fix the drippy tub faucet, and a go on a family bike ride. Then one more item crept onto the list; Work on student council campaign posters. This last one was a real deal buster for sure. This one made me want to curl up in a deep hole and hide. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem like one item could make all that much difference. But, at the time, something about this project made the list seem so long and overwhelming to me.

We got up early Saturday morning and went to work. Well, not too early. We aren’t THAT busy. If I’m ever so desperately busy I can’t sleep in a little on Saturday, it’s time to lock me away for a while.

We got up kind of early Saturday morning and went to work. First on the list were the soccer games. With three hours of overlapping soccer games, I ended up watching only about 20 minutes of one game. That was it. The rest of the time was literally spent running kids to and from games.

The rest of the day was just as nuts, climaxing at 10:00 with a second trip to the store to pick up more poster board and rubber cement. Three hours later, posters DONE, drip FIXED, and garden PLANTED, I crashed hard into bed and didn’t move until my 4 year old tried rolling me out of bed about 8:00 the next morning.

We never did get the bike ride in. Kind of sad really, since it’s something we all enjoy so much. Tomorrow though, we’ll get our bikes out tomorrow for sure. At least I hope we will. That’s what the packed schedule says anyway.

How about you? What time of year are you most busy?

Clark