"as much overtime as you want, deadline, dotted line"

Oh, did I have plans for posts this week. I gardened! I cooked! I sewed! I felt guilty on Sunday evening for not having gotten more done!

Insert a meditation on being a woman who does too much -- or wants to, anyway -- here.

I suspect my real problem is unrealistic expectations. I once counted up the time I don't spend on things like my job, my commute, and sleep, and came up with something like 50 hours I could spend doing 'other stuff.' And oh, did I feel terribly guilty about that for several days.

Then either my higher reason or my ability to rationalise kicked in (you decide which) and it occurred to me that it wasn't reasonable for anyone, least of all me, to expect that those 50-some hours should be filled with activity.

I mean, for 40 hours (or sometimes more) each week I am at my job, working. At the end of those 8-hour days I still face another hour or hour and a half driving home. So when I do get home, I am tired. Not omigawd must sleep now tired, but ... tired. Not wanting to drag a vacuum cleaner around the house, or even to empty the dishwasher.

I have, incidentally, developed a certain sympathy for the stereotypical 1950s husband, who came home from work and wanted his slippers, a cocktail, and to vanish behind his newspaper. I frequently want to do exactly the same thing.

That desire is particularly acute on days like this one, when I get to the office and find not only a giant stack of work with a ridiculous deadline on my desk, but also temperatures of 86 F (30 C) at that desk, because the air conditioning switched off over the weekend and the facilities people have to call an HVAC engineer to figure out how to turn it back on.

Really, I'll take that cocktail any time now. What do you mean it's not even noon yet?

John Maloney