Typical daily schedule:
- 06:00 – wake up
- 06:25 – ride
- 07:45 – back from ride, check email while cooling down
- 08:15ish – shower
- 08:45ish – commute
- 09:30 → 18:30 – work
- 18:30 – commute
- 19:00ish – home, dinner
- 20:00 – contemplate personal tasks, I’ll have time to work on one, maybe two absolutely on-fire, must-be-done-now tasks. Tonight they are: bicycle kit laundry so I have something to wear in the morning and scheduling three meetings in preparation for our Minecraft U summer camps that start in less than two weeks.
- by 21:00 I’m barely holding onto consciousness (although occassionally, like tonight, I’ll get a second wind), but now it’s time to try to get the kids to bed. Milo makes it difficult to get him to bed, so the entire process takes about an hour. Sometimes I’ll fall asleep on the floor in his room for an hour or two.
- by 22:00 I’m really suffering. I’ll usually return to my computer to contemplate todos or emails that need attention, but quickly find I can’t focus (literally or figuratively) on the screen
- 23:00 – it usually takes me an hour to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep
- sleep for ~7 hours, rinse, repeat
…and that’s why I haven’t blogged despite a busy, memorable winter and spring. The following events were like small holes punched in this Tetris board of a schedule:
- Stopped taking my depression medications and, unintuitively, found myself significantly less depressed
- Family spring break trip to Chicago
- Turned 48
- A trip to OKC during which my father fell ill and spent two days in the hospital. I was able to extend my trip and help my mom and dad while he was in the hospital and as he returned to their home. It was also his 83rd birthday while he was in the hospital.
- Lucy’s music recital, where she sang All Too Well, Reflection from the Mulan soundtrack, and You’re Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone with a group, doing the cups percussion thing.
- Milo’s School of Rock show, where he played Proud Mary1 and Hardest Button to Button on the drums.
- Another trip to OKC for my parent’s 60th wedding anniversary party, a 66-guest dinner-and-organ-concert affair at the Oklahoma History Center.
…and that’s also probably why I almost always feel burnt out 🥓
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Sunday while driving to church, the day after his SoR performance, he told me the instructors were asking the kids what songs they wanted to play next and he said Proud Mary. The instructor told him they’d already done Proud Mary and he replied, “No, the Tina Turner version.” As far as I know, he’d only heard that version once, when we were driving and I asked Google Assistant to play Proud Mary and it played that version. As far as I know, he’d never heard of Tina Turner before. Today, three days later, Tina Turner died. ↩