more explaining. or catching up. or sharing my brand of crazy.

It’s summer, but it doesn’t really feel like it.

That is, if summer is supposed to feel like relaxing, lazy days and free time galore.

Maybe that’s not what summer feels like once you hit – uh – twenty-two or something.

For our family, for this house, for me, summer has been constant.  Steady.  Sort of swamped.  Busier than the school year somehow.

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and out of time and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why.

Some of it is as simple as daily swim lessons at three o-clock in the afternoon.  (I chose the worst time imaginable.  What was I thinking?  Well. I signed up several months ago. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all.)

And some of it is me struggling to find a working balance between all the things I have already been occupied doing and now writing a thrice-weekly blog for Hands On! as well as managing all of the museum’s social media.

Don’t get me wrong – I pursued the job with Hands On!  And I like doing it.  

But it’s been years (years, I tell you!) since I have been under the employment of any one other than myself.  My last official job was when London and Mosely were toddlers and I had stopped teaching high school English in Virginia but was still directing the theatre department at the same small school.

And there were a lot of details about working for someone that I had forgotten.

(And this job with Hands On! I can do almost entirely from the comforts of my home and on my own schedule.  However.)

I had forgotten how much personal pressure I put on myself.

I want to do a job well.

I want to please the people who are looking at my work.

I want to benefit the company for which I am employed.

And, aside from a small set monetary sum, the amount of money I make on this job is completely commission-based.  (It only makes sense, of course, as the museum is a non-profit agency that relies heavily on wonderful volunteers and sponsors.)  (And how the blog makes money is through advertising.  And I’m a better writer than I am a salesperson.  So, you know.  Anyone want to advertise on the Hands On! blog?  Or this one, for that matter?  See?  I told you I was a better writer than a salesperson.  Well.  That sentence really doesn’t prove my point.  Sigh.)

Which, of course, means that I can only get back what I put in.

And that’s always a difficult balance to strike.

Which is where this summer has found me.

Teetering.

Pouring a bit more creative effort into other things, leaving me more creatively depleted than I assumed it would.

And steadily longing for more hours in every day.

Or the ability to function on less sleep.

Or a housekeeper.