Our neighborhood babysit swap has morphed into my way of bringing work home over the weekend relatively guilt free and actually getting it done. But last night I had roughly two hours of quiet post-bedtime swap time to cram in over seven hours of work. Left with the choice to forgo the bed my husband is warming for me, or waste a precious Sunday with my family, you’ll find me at home, here at the dining room table hunched over my laptop, deciphering spreadsheet stats and aligning pie charts in PowerPoint at roughly 2:30am.
I’m not quite sure how a working wife and mother breaks the cycle of burning the midnight oil. My days are a never-ending cycle of multitasking with next to no quiet moments for purely concentrated nose-to-the-grindstone type work. The commitment I made to myself for 2010 was to onboard a junior protégé to assume the majority of this work. But while I valiantly try, the deadlines still loom large, with clients sending their raw materials in at 8am on a Saturday expecting a Monday morning turn-around. And Sosie still frowns whenever she sees me take my laptop out of my bag.
At least now by picking back up this blog, I’ll be able to add a little connection to this midnight oil. Record these moments in an attempt to see patterns emerge. It has to be more permanent than the actual work I’m doing right now, sure to be completely revised by the client as soon as the sun rises on this new day. But no matter. I’ve got something to show for it all.
