When I started working full-time at my customer service job, I didn’t think it would feel that different from how my hours felt before. Before I was working full-time, I was working the mornings at that job and the afternoon at my box office job. So I was working from 9-3 every day between the two jobs before taking on the full-time hours and I knew that was close to what my schedule would be like. I would only have 2 hours more each day and that didn’t seem like a lot.
From the start of working the new hours, it really did feel like I was working a lot more every day. I never knew how much of a difference working 2 hours later a day would feel. I don’t know why working until 5 felt so different from working until 3, but it affected what I was willing to try to do after work. I feel in a way that I lost a part of my afternoon and free time and for a while I was staying up later at night to fit in that time into my day. But I can’t stay up late since I get up early. So I’ve been working for a while on figuring out more time management plans since I’ve been feeling a bit out of control lately.
This is still a work in progress and it will continue to be that way since things never are stable in my life. But I’m slowly figuring out how to manage my new hours and my life again. And it’s good I’m working on it now while things are still not really back in my life because of the pandemic. I’m putting everything into my calendar now, including the drive time to get places, so I make sure I don’t end up doing work when I need to drive somewhere. I am working on blocking off time in my calendar to cook when I plan on cooking because there have been too many times that I wanted to cook and the next thing I knew it was late and I was hungry. I almost have to over-schedule my day in order to have free time again. And I’ve never had to do that before. But then again, I’ve never worked this many hours.
I know that some of my jobs overlap when I work (and all these jobs know that I do that). But I can’t always overlap my hours. And when you look at my hours combined, in my 3 day jobs (not counting stuff like union service), I’m currently working 60-62 hours a week. I know there are a ton of people who work more than that, but I have never had that many hours before. Even before the pandemic, between my jobs I was working only about 38 hours a week. And yes, I’m grateful for every job that I have and I’m happy that I’m in a better financial place than before. But working more hours does make me hyperaware of the potential for burnout. And that’s why I have to schedule free time into my day. It’s far too easy to get up at 5:45am and be working almost non-stop until 7 or 8pm. And I do take little breaks in my day when I can, but I don’t take too long of a break because I don’t want to slack off in my day.
Since I’ve been scheduling more into my day, I am slowly seeing some improvements. But I haven’t been doing it as much as I should, so I know things can get better. And I’ve said this before, but I really want to figure out a good place with balancing my work and my life while I don’t have much happening in my life. When I start to add more to my life, I know I will need the skills that I’m working on building now. And hopefully the work I’m doing now will help prevent me from feeling as overwhelmed and as much burnout as I know could happen.
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Missing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management)
Seeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now)
Back To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time)
Fitting It All In (or Getting Better At Time Management)
Finally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule)
Getting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)
