Time Poverty - The Long Version

First off, I hope you all appreciated my weak attempt at an April Fool's joke. I've never been a big prankster and I've been meaning to post those Christmas videos for the last three months so it seemed like a good opportunity to get them up and not appear completely out of place in the process. Hopefully it won't take quite that long to get our pictures and video of Easter up.

A brief note about Easter - it was awesome! These types of holidays are so much more fun as parents than they were as childless adults. It brings so much more meaning to them as well. Janie did a great job with her egg hunt. And conference was great for many reasons. I just wish that I would do a better job of keeping a notebook close by to jot down all the great one-liners that stand out to me so I don't forget them five minutes later. Guess I'll have to bust out a highlighter when the Ensign comes and see how many of them I can find again.

As for other items of interest, there are a couple columnists on Yahoo! Finance I like to read on occasion. One of them is Laura Rowley. Her column focuses mostly on the relationships between money and happiness which seems to be two of my favorite topics. I recently read this article which was her reaction about a poll people took about what they would sacrifice to double their income. Towards the end it talks about time affluence and time poverty which really stood out to me for obvious reasons. That just happens to be one of the things that's been on my mind quite a bit lately, which I'm sure is no surprise.

We are very time poor. The more I pay attention to how our time outside of our workplaces is used (excluding Mark's homework time), the more bonkers I become about two things: 1 - getting my parents house done, and 2 - being able to stay at home with Janie. No, we're STILL not done with my parents house! Sad, huh. However, we are finally approaching the end. The bathroom is 100%-ish done. The kitchen is about 75% done. Not counting carpet, the bedrooms are about 90% done. The living room is our last beastly project and then we can finish all the details throughout the rest of the house, clean it all up, throw in some carpet, and it's done! This is going to be the last month of working on it even if it kills me. Mark made a good point the other day about how he's hardly known what it's been like being married to me without the burden of that place. It's going to be pretty nice to have that burden removed and be able to move forward with goals for our OWN home.

Being able to be a stay-at-home-mom is becoming more important to me too. (No, I'm NOT pregnant!) Most of my friends have that opportunity now and I agree with them that being a SAHM is definitely work/a job/etc. However, I would like them to try to accomplish all that they get done without the 9-10 most productive hours of their day 5 days of the week so they can better relate to what I try to accomplish. I've been paying closer attention to how my Saturdays go and it's amazing all that I can get done in those hours that I typically spend at work during the week. To be able to increase that by five more days would be absolutely amazing to me for so many reasons! Janie is starting to hit an age where I would really like her to have more consistency in her environment since she essentially lives in three different worlds with three different sets of rules and expectations. And it's sad to me that the vast majority of the cute things she's learned (words, sounds, signs, etc.) haven't been in her own home, although I'm very grateful for those who have taught her those things. There are a lot of other little challenges to only spending about 3-4 hours a day with her at this point too and I'm concerned those challenges are going to become more difficult as she gets older.

I have a lot of personal reasons for wanting to stay home too. It has been forever since I've done one of my old hobbies. I've kind of taken up two new ones - reading and couponing. Couponing I do since it just makes so much sense to do it. The time I put into it compared with the savings I get out of it, I make more money per hour couponing than I do at my job. And the reading has come about from being disappointed in myself that I had read so few books front to back in my lifetime and wanted to change that. Before about last August, I had only read 8 books start to finish ... EVER (not including scriptures). I read two in the last few months of 2009 bringing my total to 10. So I set a goal to double that this year with all 10 needing to be at least 200 pages. I've finished 3 so far and I'm about 700 pages through the Count of Monte Cristo. Only 760 more pages to go! The only time I can really find to read is during my lunch breaks at work though. But back to my old hobbies, I don't think I've crocheted a single thing since I've been married. I haven't had a garden in 4 years. I've hardly touched the piano which is something I'd like to pass on to Janie, but you have to play it for that to work. It's hard finding time to go to the gym (yes, I enjoy it rather than it being a chore). And even just keeping up with house work is really rewarding to me but difficult to do. So life feels extremely unfulfilling. We did squeeze a vacation in during a three week break Mark had from school in March since we knew it would be the last chance we could do a nice vacation for ourselves for the next few years. And boy, was it needed! I'm also sad to say that I feel like the spiritual side of my life has taken a hit too. I used to have some really good habits going which are rather inconsistant now days. Church isn't really all that fulfilling either since we spend sacrament meeting trying to keep Janie entertained and then spend the last two hours chillin' with the kiddos in nursery. While nursery is fun, it doesn't contribute much to the spiritual nourishment one hopes to get out of those three hours each Sunday.

So after all my venting/whining/complaining, I'm happy to say that there's hope! The house will be gone here some time in the next few months. And I've got prospects to be able to work from home within the next year or so. I have a friend who's looking for an assistant later on to basically do the paperwork side of her Mary Kay business which she's quite successful at so there's enough work on the side. And there's a sister company to my current employer that offers contract work you can do at home. I've kind of dropped a word or two in over there that I would be interested in doing that once they're hiring again and the timing is a little better for me. We have a few goals we need to accomplish first and just a little more stability from Mark's job (like benefits, or a better job) but we're on our way as far as those go. Mark will be done with school in September and I think he's getting a little nervous about what lies ahead. He's very much a "here and now" kind of person and not knowing what the future holds can be rather overwhelming for him. Trying to get his feet planted in a legitimate career path is also quite new to him so he's had some frustration with things not going quite as he planned. But I must say I'm really proud of him. He's worked really hard on his school work. He's gone through 3 jobs in the last 6 months trying to get some work experience. He's learned some really good lessons in patience and things not going as planned. And he's still moving forward. Mark's progress and the potential job prospects are making it a little easier for me to keep plugging along the next few months knowing that we're going to make it. Woo-hoo! Now if only I could stop catching these colds for a few months, it would really help too.