Balance

I am forever trying to find a balance between work and home. Between my husband and time to myself.  Between my kids and my students. We all know how difficult it is to juggle different roles during the course of a day. Even within my workday I wear different hats for different people.

 The trouble for me has always been my commute. I work so far from where my family lives. I've spent years resenting this fact. How dare they expect me to stay after work for a meeting- I live an hour away! How dare she wake up at 1:30 a.m! I have to wake up at 4!! Sometimes on bad days I still feel like I've wasted two hours sitting in the car when that could've been spent playing in the backyard with my kids or taking them on a spontaneous afternoon trip to Spring Farm, the kind I am famous for.

But most days now I get work done in the car. How is that? I plan a lot in my head. I strategize lessons, think about how I will couch a writing activity or how I will help them develop their thesis statements. It's strange because for the past seven years I spent my car rides listening to audio books because I always felt like I didn't have enough time to read for pleasure. Too much of my "free" time was spent grading and planning. But now with children, on the weekends there really is no time to plan or grade.  When I did, I'd give up chunks of my Saturday or Sunday to prepare for the upcoming week only to switch gears midweek and spend more time at work on planning and less on grading like I had originally intended. It felt like a royal waste of time.

But I realized this school year, pretty much by accident, that instead of listening to books I can listen to my favorite music (READ: Mumford & Sons, Lumineers and Passenger) I can get a lot of focused creative thinking done while driving. I also think about my lessons when I'm sitting in our recliner in the dark waiting for sleep to take over both of the kids. It's a way  I can keep myself from interacting with the kids (and thereby inadvertently waking them up) and it's the ONLY way I can keep from getting annoyed that I'm sitting in the dark yet again waiting for them to fall asleep. 

I have, by no means, found the perfect balance or the perfect solution to the working-mom-who-has-to-bring-her-work-home problem. I still have to grade sometimes on the weekends and if not then on weeknights when I'm completely and utterly exhausted from being up since 4 a.m.! But this is a step in the right direction and for that I am grateful.