All in a day's work

I admit that by the time September started, I was ready to send the kids off to school. We’d had a good summer and done a lot of interesting activities, but I was eager to turn my focus to my work. Afraid of the consequences of reducing my output over the summer, I hadn’t cut back on writing assignments at all; I had just tried to do the same amount of work in three-hour rather than six-hour workdays, per the deal I strike with the kids in the summer that I can work from 9 a.m. to noon and then we’ll have fun together all afternoon. So as summer ended, I had ongoing clients, new clients, and projects of my own that I wanted to pay more attention to. The resumption of school meant the resumption of long days of writing for me. At least in my mind.

And for the past two days I’ve been extremely productive, turning around assignments, generating new ones, and hitting deadlines. But what I tend to overlook when I line up my daily agenda in my mind’s eye is the sheer diversity that my workday encompasses. There are articles, essays and press releases to write, of course. That’s the work I get paid for. But there are household tasks, farm tasks, and family tasks that crop up throughout the day as well, which makes it really beneficial to be self-employed but also makes it challenging sometimes to account for my time.

Yesterday, for example, I did plenty of writing. I also scheduled a vet appointment for the dog, made a batch of puttanesca sauce, began organizing the volunteer schedule for the school library, sent a logo to the editor of the school newsletter so that she could help me publicize the upcoming Spaghetti Supper, let the sheep out to graze, posted two articles to my website and ran two miles. Throughout the late morning, I could hear a cow mooing incessantly, so shortly after noon I went out to investigate and found that her calf had once again wandered into the bull pasture. The mother cow wasn’t happy about this at all, but the baby was perfectly content, so I decided no action needed to be taken and went back to work.

When the kids arrived home from school, I helped them assemble ingredients for their weekly banana bread baking session; their goal this week is 25 loaves to sell at Farmers Market on Saturday. I washed dishes and folded laundry in the course of the day, and visited with my parents next door for a few minutes. I sent out save-the-dates for Tim’s birthday party.

And at 10 p.m., I was ironing. Not ironing clothes; ironing artwork. Holly had spent the afternoon making fuse-bead creations, which are like little mosaics made out of plastic beads that then stick together once you iron them, and I had promised her I’d iron them after she went to bed.

We live in a small and fairly homogeneous town, but days like today make me appreciate the inherent diversity in any 24-hour period. Writing is a wonderful way to make a living, but it’s only part of how I spend my day. And I consider this a blessing. A diversity of activities keeps us all busy and stimulated. And it’s made me better than I ever imagined I’d be at prioritizing. Sometimes an article deadline can wait but an impatiently braying cow cannot. It’s helpful for me to recognize the difference, even if I might never choose to share that distinction with my editors.