Routine
I am a creature of habit. I am comfortable with routine. New situations, new jobs, new people usually make me a bit uneasy. Oh, okay, sometimes a lot uneasy. If I can make it past the initial breaking-in period, I find a kind of new comfort zone that I can live with, although it always takes a longer period of time before it truly becomes a comfort zone.
The decision to go to college was a momentous decision for me. For many years, I thought that I might like to go, but having only an eighth grade education served as a huge doubting point for me. So I took the route of getting my GED, going to the technical school, and getting a diploma as an accounting assistant. I finished the course at the end of 1997 but didn’t officially graduate until the spring of 1998. I thought I was done with education.
The next six years led to a range of jobs held simultaneously that left me exhausted and tired of that pace of life. This exhaustion coupled with boredom at work led to my enrollment in college.
My Old Routine
My first two semesters were all late afternoon and evening classes. I liked the schedule simply because I could pretty routinely get 35 to 37 hours of work in, down from 45 hours a week. My income didn’t suffer as much as I feared it might when I made the decision to go to school. It was an extremely hectic year. My weekends were a marathon of homework, housework, yard work, laundry, and grocery shopping. I survived on probably an average of five and a half to six hours of sleep.
I took a summer class through the month of June. It only met two nights a week, but because of cramming a 16-week English course into five weeks, the reading, writing, and research involved kept me just as busy as I had been. But in it all, I found a certain comfort zone and survived.
My Current Routine
My high levels of exhaustion finally caught up with me. The first week or two after my summer class, I think my body went through a period of crashing. By 8 or 9 in the evening, I was completely shot and just wanted to go to bed. I often wouldn’t allow myself to go that early because I felt like I would just end up wasting all of my precious free time.
My days at work seem so incredibly long. I don’t have to leave early for classes so my 9-hour days absolutely drag. I have so much more time to do the things that I was doing in shorter periods of time, leaving blocks of time in which I just sit and think or twiddle my thumbs. I wonder how I ever lived with the boredom for the last two years before homework became the focus of all my down time at work.
To a certain degree, I welcome the chance to just sit and dwell on things or bring small projects to work on or read, but I also sit and think of all the things at home that I need to do and it bugs me to be idle.
Something that I’ve noticed is that during school I think of things that I want to write about and it becomes almost a necessity to sit down and just type it out. It becomes therapeutic. Now that I have more free time, I still think of things that I would like to write about, but maybe because my stress level is not as high, I don’t feel the need to get it out like I do during school. Hmmm.
So my current routine is to twiddle my way through my work days and then pick up the pace after work desperately trying to get some deep cleaning done, dresses made, yard work done, and other neglected projects completed. I’m back to my short nights because of projects I get involved in.
My Future Routine
This fall I will start taking morning classes five days a week. It’s going to shoot my routine all to pieces, but I think that I’ll like taking classes in the morning. I won’t have to fight the end-of-the-day letdown that would try to put me to sleep in some of my evening classes. I had to carry No Doz in my backpack to fight it.
I will be able to do homework in the early evenings or even at work if I have some down time. Then if I can discipline the night owl within me, I may even be able to get a little more sleep this fall. The downside of morning classes is, of course, the reduced income, but there is something within me that really doesn’t care right now. Recently, I’ve wanted nothing more than to just quit work and go to school. I’m sure once I suffer through the inevitable case of Severely Reduced Income Shock, I’ll care.
The decision to go to college was a momentous decision for me. For many years, I thought that I might like to go, but having only an eighth grade education served as a huge doubting point for me. So I took the route of getting my GED, going to the technical school, and getting a diploma as an accounting assistant. I finished the course at the end of 1997 but didn’t officially graduate until the spring of 1998. I thought I was done with education.
The next six years led to a range of jobs held simultaneously that left me exhausted and tired of that pace of life. This exhaustion coupled with boredom at work led to my enrollment in college.
My Old Routine
My first two semesters were all late afternoon and evening classes. I liked the schedule simply because I could pretty routinely get 35 to 37 hours of work in, down from 45 hours a week. My income didn’t suffer as much as I feared it might when I made the decision to go to school. It was an extremely hectic year. My weekends were a marathon of homework, housework, yard work, laundry, and grocery shopping. I survived on probably an average of five and a half to six hours of sleep.
I took a summer class through the month of June. It only met two nights a week, but because of cramming a 16-week English course into five weeks, the reading, writing, and research involved kept me just as busy as I had been. But in it all, I found a certain comfort zone and survived.
My Current Routine
My high levels of exhaustion finally caught up with me. The first week or two after my summer class, I think my body went through a period of crashing. By 8 or 9 in the evening, I was completely shot and just wanted to go to bed. I often wouldn’t allow myself to go that early because I felt like I would just end up wasting all of my precious free time.
My days at work seem so incredibly long. I don’t have to leave early for classes so my 9-hour days absolutely drag. I have so much more time to do the things that I was doing in shorter periods of time, leaving blocks of time in which I just sit and think or twiddle my thumbs. I wonder how I ever lived with the boredom for the last two years before homework became the focus of all my down time at work.
To a certain degree, I welcome the chance to just sit and dwell on things or bring small projects to work on or read, but I also sit and think of all the things at home that I need to do and it bugs me to be idle.
Something that I’ve noticed is that during school I think of things that I want to write about and it becomes almost a necessity to sit down and just type it out. It becomes therapeutic. Now that I have more free time, I still think of things that I would like to write about, but maybe because my stress level is not as high, I don’t feel the need to get it out like I do during school. Hmmm.
So my current routine is to twiddle my way through my work days and then pick up the pace after work desperately trying to get some deep cleaning done, dresses made, yard work done, and other neglected projects completed. I’m back to my short nights because of projects I get involved in.
My Future Routine
This fall I will start taking morning classes five days a week. It’s going to shoot my routine all to pieces, but I think that I’ll like taking classes in the morning. I won’t have to fight the end-of-the-day letdown that would try to put me to sleep in some of my evening classes. I had to carry No Doz in my backpack to fight it.
I will be able to do homework in the early evenings or even at work if I have some down time. Then if I can discipline the night owl within me, I may even be able to get a little more sleep this fall. The downside of morning classes is, of course, the reduced income, but there is something within me that really doesn’t care right now. Recently, I’ve wanted nothing more than to just quit work and go to school. I’m sure once I suffer through the inevitable case of Severely Reduced Income Shock, I’ll care.
It will be an interesting change of pace even if it makes me uneasy. I think that in the long run I’ll like this schedule better.
posted by Sharon @ 6:29 PM
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