Blog Neglect – When fulltime work gets in the way

I got a new job, and once again this website is suffering a serious case of blog neglect. However, I have been lucky enough to secure a new job that requires only a 32 hour week.

Unfortunately, that’s not what I’m doing.

Like almost everyone getting back to work after losing a job, I am desperate to please and willing to work hard to do it. Which, in the broadest of terms, means taking everything given to me and returning it as quickly as I can, irrespective of whether I’ve eventually worked a 45 hour week.
However, I have come to realise that I’m just creating a rod for my own back. Every time I get five day’s work done (or more) without letting my new employers know that it’s taking me five days or more, they still believe that I can do this amount of work in four days.

Yes, I do realise that I’m stupid to let this continue.

Fulltime work = Blog neglect

There are only so many hours in a day; some of them I need to sleep. So where does the rest go?

Well, sometimes I spend time with my family (shock horror! How dare I). It’s unavoidable, I have a toddler. There is only so long that he will accept “Mommy’s busy,” or “Mommy’s working” before he gets physical and tries to drag me off my computer chair to play legos or cars.

I can’t spend all of my time sitting at the computer. It isn’t healthy, mentally or physically. I get really bad backache when I spend too much time at a computer, not to mention the eye strain and headaches. The body needs to move, to exercise, and to get a bit of blood pumping to the brain.

I have material, I write old school, with a pen or pencil and paper. It gets me outside even when it’s not warm and I don’t get eye strain from staring at a screen for too many hours per day.

Yet I still suffer from blog neglect.

What about the rest of the time?

Well, let’s see. There is cleaning, laundry, cooking, being a wife (yes this means making time for that wonderful man I call husband), trying desperately to get my son to eat anything other than toast. That last one is a time-consuming drain of energy.

I do morning pages, which is a combination of “brain-dump”, journalling and ideas for work. Theoretically, I’m supposed to go non-stop for 3 pages of A4 and then stop. However, I rarely stop after 3 pages because the creative juices have already started to flow, whether they’re personal or work.

Unless it is something I’m working on for my employer, those words rarely find their way to the digital realm.

Material needs to be online for anyone to read it, so far all I have is a folder full of pages that no one will ever read, and my descendants will throw it away. That isn’t going to happen. I won’t let it!

Update:

As it stands I have a conscientious employer; they asked me if the working hours were appropriate. They have impressed me. I didn’t have to steel myself to get the courage to say anything. Asking for anything is difficult for me.

Unfortunately, longers hours means less time for blogging…

I’m not giving up. I’m still blogging, I just have to get the paper copies typed up.

In a more optimistic vein, I have started writing my posts properly on paper, rather than half-formed, childish scrawl that I then can’t read.

We’re stepping things up again. Maybe now I can come to my PC with my paper blog and simply transcribe it, rather than getting the broad strokes and having to rewrite it.

Here’s to the end of terminal blog neglect. Cheers!