Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!
Yesterday I was messaging with a coworker on Slack, and I said this:
Yeah, I have an article to write, deadline ASAP, so I’m cleaning the freezer…
That’s pretty much how things are going around here.
My freezer is very clean after yesterday’s defrosting binge. And I don’t have to buy any more meat for the next 2 months, except for what I’ll need for TheKid’s graduation party next Saturday.
(I’m cooking! Want to come over and help us eat all the food?)
That defrosting binge was definitely stress organizing. I’m doubling up on work this month; in addition to my regular job at CatholicMom.com, I’m doing editorial support for Today’s Catholic Teacher during the month of June.
THAT was a total fluke. I answered a call for articles on Twitter and wound up building a spreadsheet of articles, authors and word counts. I’m writing an article too, but there’s not really a learning curve as far as that goes.
So as I juggle my regular part-time job and learn a new (temporary) one, I found something I could totally control–my freezer. It’s full, but it’s organized and I have a LIST of what’s in it.
As for the rest of it, I’ll muddle through. I’m learning a lot, and working with some amazing (and patient) people. Once I finally find my groove, though, the job will end. That’s the nature of temp work. I should be used to it, after all the substitute-teaching I’ve done.
But in the back of my head, I’ve got one more list: things I can spend an hour organizing when I need to clear my head and take complete control of something.
I hope nothing happened on Twitter yesterday. There was no time to tweet (and that’s not simply a leisure activity for me. It’s networking.) I was doing work for 2 jobs, outlining an article, making a batch of cold-brew coffee, washing 5 loads of laundry, defrosting and organizing the freezer, making chicken stock and then dinner, attending folk group practice that ran late, then freezing 21 cups of chicken stock and doing all the dinner dishes that the people who ate dinner late left for me. (We’re going to have to have a talk about THAT.)
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I could do with some stress organizing around here. About the dishes in the sink – that was about the only time I’d see my mother angry. If she went out and came home to dirty dishes, she was NOT happy. I dislike that, too, but it’s pretty much always the case. I need to give my oldest kids some dishwashing lessons.
I was HOME the whole time. The folk group practices at my house (we started this 10 years ago when there were several small children among us. Our instruments are portable and this way the kids could play.) But we ran late (special event this weekend to rehearse) and I did NOT want to have to wash dishes at 10 PM.
There’s something inherently wrong about washing dishes late at night. I’ve done some close to midnight. At that point, if I can, I leave it for the morning. But sometimes I NEED those dishes. They’re getting brittle and breaking one by one until we barely have enough for a family meal.
I love that you are productive even in your procrastination lol!! Very cool on the (temp) job – you are a woman of so many amazing talents. My amazing relationship with Catholicmom.com all started on Twitter – just about 4 years ago this week!!! AND people say NO good comes from Social Media – I totes disagree!!
In College my living space was the cleanest at exam time… For me the conscious bran needs a bit of a break and the chores allowed that.
[…] the new managing editor/digital content manager at Today’s Catholic Teacher magazine. I did this work on an interim basis for a month last summer, so I’ve had a taste of what I’ll be doing, but I’ve never worked through the […]