Timetable

CWs: food, alcohol, work, death

I was thinking lately about how my time is structured and how I tend to move through the world. Patterns and such. What I do now is very different than earlier in life, say 10 or so years ago. 10 years ago, I had just finished my PhD (well, 11 years ago), and was trying to find a tenure-track job. Tail end of grad school, tying up loose ends. Now I have a career and a life with my spouse and the kitties and our town and it’s just all way different. I’ve been reading Tricia Hersey’s fabulous book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and it’s so good. Rest is extremely important. Avoid burnout. Take enough time for yourself to recharge. It’s not always easy and not always possible, but a good balance can be found.

That said, my time tends to be pretty structured these days. I work 40hrs/week, often devoting another 10hrs/week to a side project of translating Latin (depending on the week, really). Weeks are long. I like to say that at the end of the week, I really feel like I’ve “earned” the rest. But that’s not true. We all deserve rest, because just living is often work enough. Everyone’s going through something, and “work” is not a static thing. It looks different for everyone. Some people, like myself, work a “regular” job with set hours, then go about the rest of their lives. Some people work more, some less, and that’s OK. What we do in life is meaningful, whether that involves a “traditional” job or not.

Most of my life has been spent in academia, with only a handful of “real” jobs. My first job was sweeping sawdust and cleaning machinery at a lumber mill, graveyard shift (11pm-7am). I lasted about 2 weeks at that job and realized I had to find something else. Then I worked at the college bookstore, mostly for “book rush,” and would have been fine being hired on during classes, but my parents wanted me to focus on school. My last year of undergrad, I worked retail, and it was good to have some extra money. For a good chunk of my master’s degree, I had a nice work-study job 10hrs/week during the semester, and then worked as much as I could during the summer. For my PhD, I was a teaching assistant part-time and otherwise my tuition was paid, though I took out too many loans in general (which I’m now paying back, yuck). I worked briefly at a research department on campus after graduating, did a bit of adjuncting, then moved to Colorado and taught middle/high school for 3 years. Had a stopgap job at a community college in the testing center (it was a nice stopgap!), then got hired at my current job, which I love.

Basically, we all have our own path through life, and that path isn’t always straight. Which is totally OK. I’m happy my life has turned out like it has. I don’t regret it, because it’s brought me where I am now. Life works, for the most part, and in my 40s, I feel like I’m finally figuring things out. Isn’t that a shame that it takes this long to sort life out? Oh well. Again, it’s all worth it.

Here’s how a typical week goes for yours truly: I get up, have breakfast, catch up on news and such. Get in bed and snuggle with Ajax (usually), play more on my phone. I work from home 4 days of the week, so my commute is literally from the bedroom/living room to my office. Start my day, work for 8hrs. 2 15min breaks, per usual, during the first of which I usually have a snack and hang out with kitties and/or my spouse. Lunch is always nice. On my office day, I get up about 45min earlier than normal, generally do the same routine (sans Ajax snuggles), get dressed and packed up, pack a lunch, and commute to work (about 25min there, 35-40min back).

Once I’m done with work, I am often working for 1.5hrs on Latin transcription/translation. After that, we generally have dinner, hang out, watch some TV, talk, &c., for a little while. I will often do dishes (one of my chores; my spouse does 95% of the cooking, so it’s a fair trade), scoop the litterboxes. Sometimes I need to take trash/recycling out to the bins out in back of the garage. Y’know, chores, and that’s all good. I feel good getting that stuff done, and doing dishes is kinda relaxing. When I first started listening to You’re Wrong About, I remember I shotgunned episodes while doing chores like dishes. I like loading the dishwasher and getting it going. Our cycle takes about 2hrs on auto, but it does a great job, and probably is much more efficient with water use than I am.

Here is the nucleus of my thoughts in general: how I structure my free time on weekday evenings. After my spouse and I hang out, I tend to get on my laptop and either surf the internet, do stuff on the laptop in general (write, for example), and/or play games. The dinner bell for Xya is pretty rigidly set at 9pm every night. I remember back in the day, I used to get up with her in the middle of the night, and feed her wet food at 3am. I have no clue why I did that, but that was the routine for awhile. My spouse recommended I feed her earlier, though, and 9pm stuck, both for me and for Xya as well. I swear she doesn’t know how to tell time, but I swear she does. She’s ready at 9pm. Even Lyra starts crying outside my door at about 8 or 8:30pm. I firmly believe she’s team FOMO though; she just wants to be included. I give her a spoonful of wet food, but the lion’s share to Xya, since Lyra honestly doesn’t care about the food beyond a few bites. Xya gets her wet food, a crushed-up pill to ward off allergies, fish oil, and Lyra gets her bit of food. Ajax is on special food, so the best I can do for him is 5-6 Greenie treats. He is pretty happy with those.

Once the kitties have set aside their desire for food and drink, I’m left with a little time before bed. I generally go to sleep on weeknights around 11:30pm, and wake up at 6:15 or 7am, depending on whether I’m in the office or not. So I have about 2.5hrs after feeding the girls to relax and wind down before bed. I really enjoy this time. However, I’ve found that Lyra just will not let me hang out in the bedroom in bed; she will be bitey and scratchy and just generally a pest. So post cenam is kitty time. My spouse is generally in bed listening to podcasts or reading; the kitties do not bug them at all. Sometimes I’m jealous, since I’d rather be snuggled up in bed. But at the same time it’s kind of a blessing. My spouse and I love hanging out together, but we’ve been together long enough that it’s nice to do our own thing and wind down in our own ways.

So I hang out in the living room with the kitties. Ajax often hangs out with me on the couch and is a snuggly boy. Lyra sometimes will join me, but it has to be her idea. I can’t set her down next to me, or she’ll bolt. She has to decide on it, so I always find it a blessing when she does come join me (as long as I don’t need to get up or make any sudden movements; then it’s game over). I usually read from 9-10:30pm most nights, unless I’m really, really into my book, in which case I’ll read up until 11:30pm. Before I start reading, though, I will generally make a cup of tea. Right now I have Sleepytime Vanilla (it’s so good!), a “stroopwafel” rooibos tea, and Throat Cooler (heavy notes of menthol!) for bedtime teas. I should get others; the other teas I have are caffeinated and not good for before bed. So I kinda rotate between those three at the moment. Oh, I also have some loose-leaf chamomile, which is delightful. I love chamomile tea so much.

Once I’ve made my tea, I settle in with my book. Currently I’m rotating between three books, two prose, one poetry (I’m slowly making my way through Kevin Young’s edited collection African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song and it’s excellent, but it’ll take me awhile; I am about halfway through). I really love having that time to read, hang out with the kitties, and generally calm down after the often-busy events of the day. For years I’ve tried to dedicate at least an hour a night to reading; sometimes it ends up being 2hrs. Not only do I love reading, but the combo of reading, tea, and kitties is really lovely. It is a little space where I can create and promote rest for myself. Even though the books are often intellectually stimulating, it’s a way to rest my body, recharge, and luxuriate in a book and the loveliness which is tea. I don’t do hot tea before bed that much during the warmer months, for obvious reasons, but we’re getting into the colder months and it is very, very welcome. It’s also nice to spend time with the kitties; it is when I get some of my best Ajax time, and Lyra time as well. Xya is often sleeping in her cat bed, but I do see her a bit. I think she just likes being in the same room with me.

At 10:30pm, usually, I will throw on a podcast of some kind until 11:30pm when I go to bed. For a couple of months there I was listening almost exclusively to sleep stories at this time of night in the Calm app, which was nice, and I should throw that into the mix again. But I’ve had a bunch of good podcasts lately to listen to, so generally that’s what I’m doing. Catching up on news as well, but y’know, I should focus more on the podcasts than doomscrolling news. The idea is to wind down, and news winds me up (ha ha). Probably better to wake up with my news and start the day. I do like the Calm stories and I am really debating whether to continue the subscription after this year. My work will reimburse for it this year (reminds me, I need to turn in that reimbursement form!), but that reimbursement is going away next year. I’ll have to evaluate whether it’s worth $70 USD/year (I got half off for this year, which was nice).

Usually a bit before bed, I’ll floss and brush my teeth, the usual pre-bedtime stuff. I try to feed Lyra before I hop into bed. Invariably, though, Lyra will get scratchy on the covers when I’ve just settled in bed, and that’s frustrating. Usually Lyra will do her little food dance for a couple of rounds like this, then she’ll calm down for the time being and let me get to sleep. Lyra will often wake me up numerous times during the night asking for food, which is often very frustrating. Last night she kept me up intermittently from 4-5am. Pretty normal for her. We can’t leave food out because Ajax is on special food and the girls eat different food. Xya also will overeat if we’re not careful. So I gotta feed everyone on-demand. You might suggest we get some kind of auto-feeder. I have thought about it, one that would open with RFID or something. I hear they exist. But I haven’t gone for that, mostly because we’d need two of them, and that gets spendy. The kitties are already spendy enough with special food, wet food, treats, and Xya’s meds (almost $70 USD for a 40-day supply, yikes!). They’re pains but I love them dearly.

I am going to be a wreck when we lose Ajax & Xya. They’re both going to be 14 next year and I am hoping we have at least a few more good years with them. They’re both in reasonably good health; Ajax has bladder issues which are managed by the special food, and it’s possible Xya has thyroid issues; we’ll just have to monitor. They’re getting up there, but it’s OK. We have had so many wonderful years with them and I’m very grateful for it. I love them so much. Lyra has been a delightful, albeit infuriating, addition to our household. I love her dearly as well. She will be 5 next year, so we’ll have her for a good long time (fingers crossed). Just trying to enjoy all the time we have with all three. My spouse is Xya’s favorite thing in the entire world, second only to food; I would dare to say I am Ajax’s, but I’m not sure. Lyra is pretty equal opportunity and is really genuinely “our” kitty, while Ajax is “mine” and Xya is “my spouse’s.” But we are a little happy family and I’m grateful for all of it.

I’ve mentioned our weekdays and weeknights. I’d like to mention weekends a bit. Friday nights are a lot more free-form, as one would expect. We sometimes get pizza, if we’re feeling lazy about cooking or just want a treat, and usually watch something fun on TV, sometimes have a drink or two. I don’t generally go out on Friday nights, but we were out recently for a comedy show (Maria Bamford! She was hilarious!) on a Friday, and that was cool. Usually we do our outings on Saturdays. I generally do 10hrs/week of Latin, and most of it gets done on Saturday/Sunday, so often there are 3-5hrs of Latin to do on the weekend amid other stuff. We will usually get a meal out on Saturday somewhere, do whatever errands need doing, sometimes take a day trip, sometimes go to a brewery and have some drinks. It’s the weekend, right? Pretty much whatever. I love having that time be more unstructured and spontaneous, but I do tend to prefer doing “fun” things on Saturdays rather than Sundays.

Our Sundays are generally grocery day. Sometimes we do a grocery pickup Sunday morning, but I think we may do that less often, since half the time our orders get the wrong things or are somehow messed up. I’d rather just go in and pick things out myself at 8-9am before the church crowds come in and ruin things. Sometimes we get breakfast out on either day. I like going to Dutch Bros to get coffee on either day as well, or somewhere fun and local. Sundays I’m usually doing yardwork (depending on time of year), going to the recycling center to drop off yard waste, e-waste, or glass recycling, or doing other sometimes-boring errands. If I need to do home maintenance, that’s also generally a weekend thing, since I don’t want to deal with it after working 8hrs on a weekday. I just don’t. I figure you can understand that. But I really like just relaxing on weekends, having longer stretches of time just to be and recharge from the storms of the week, and prepare for the week ahead.

I don’t get the “Sunday scaries” as much anymore as I used to. They were pretty prevalent when I was teaching; Sunday was generally my lesson planning and grading day, so I grew to loathe Sundays. Now they’re a lot more chill. Sunday nights are nice because I treat them like a weeknight, and after feeding the girls I do my usual tea and reading. It’s a lovely way to get ready for the week ahead. I really try to get a good night’s sleep, at least on weeknights and Sundays; on Fridays and Saturdays I tend to stay up a little later, but still wake up a bit early (because cats. always cats.). It’s hard to sleep in these days for me, not only because of cats, but also because I get tired of wearing my CPAP and I kinda hit a wall. Still, I use my CPAP anywhere from 4-8hrs/night (4 is on the very low end, if I’ve stayed up super late, but yeah), so I’ll give myself a gold star for that. (I really do sleep better with it and breathe better, it is life-changing)

I dunno. I thought it would be interesting to share with y’all my routines and how I tend to structure my time. It is also interesting for me to chronicle it and see how things are going in life, and I hope I’ll have this to look back upon, see how my habits change over the years. I don’t think they’ll change much, and I am OK with that, but who knows? It’s certainly possible. Maybe Lyra will mellow out and I’ll be able to hang out and read in bed again! That would be cool, but I don’t think she’s going to change much; she is pretty set in her ways. So I adapt to the kitty. I structure a lot of my life around the cats, and I’m OK with that and used to it. It’s a small price to pay for little fuzzy lovebombs with sharp teeth and claws which they know how to use, because life is better because of them, they make everything just a little brighter. I’d love to know how y’all typically spend your time. I don’t know if it’s quite as structured as mine ends up being, but hey, that’s OK! Spontaneity is good. I just don’t have a lot of it to go around, except for vacations or on weekends, so I find the quiet little air pockets when I can, and create them if needed.

Thanks for reading <3