Schedule Update

Well aside from the drone footage, I really haven’t been up to much in the last week and a half. There were some random trail rides and scattered workouts for the horses here and there, but clearly nothing memorable enough to write about, or I would have done it. Complete with a media overload, because that’s my style. #mediahopro (Carly I hope this hashtag never dies haha) 

This week I switched to my “summer hours” at work – this is the third year my job has offered them and I’m trying out a third attempt at a schedule I like. The first year I worked four 10-hour days, cutting out one of my days commuting. I overlapped it with DH’s schedule so we both had Wednesdays off (which also meant I never worked more than two days in a row, which was nice!). But what inevitably happened was that we would cram so much into that one day off that it ended up becoming a day I kind of resented. Also I am just not cut out for 10-hour shifts – I wanted to stab myself in the eyeballs every single day around hour nine. I think it would be different if my job was super fast-paced, because being busy would make the time go by faster, but one thing I do appreciate about my job most of the time is that it’s NOT super hectic and fast-paced (been there, done that, got the t-shirt and a side helping of anxiety meds and hair falling out from stress). I think I might also tolerate 10-hour days better if I didn’t also have to add two hours of commuting on top of it, but being away from home for 12 hours a day four days a week SUCKED. 

Exhausted squirrel is exhausted.

Last year I decided to try something a little different – I opted to come in half an hour earlier than normal, and then leave half an hour earlier than normal. A big factor to that decision was that the bridge I take to get to work was undergoing massive construction and traffic was wretched – flexing my hours that 30 minutes enabled me to miss the worst of it, so that was super helpful. What was less helpful was that I had quite a bit of free time in the evenings, which I *thought* would be a good thing, but actually ended up being kind of a pain, since it was basically still broiling hot until closer to dark. So what I ended up doing was coming home, making myself dinner and doing stuff in the house until like an hour before dark, and then trying to squeeze in my riding then. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked last summer. The wrench in trying to do that plan again would be DH’s new schedule – because of how early he gets up on work days, he insists on going to bed no later than 9 – and he’d really prefer 8 (which I CANNOT DO. Physically can’t get in bed at 8. I can’t).

One of our chickens randomly laid like a SUPER tiny egg.... Weird.

So this year I mixed it up and decided to try a later start (and working a little later, obviously) to try to give myself time to do things in the mornings. Monday didn’t get off to the best start (I stayed up wayyyyy too late on Sunday binge watching TV), but I was able to run several errands and still roll into work with time to spare. Of course, trying to adjust to the abbreviated free time in the evening was a little rough. Tuesday was better – I got up, made it out to the barn to lunge Ruby, and still had plenty of time to get ready for work (and catch up on some blog reading using my wifi at home instead of my cell data, #winning). 

She seemed confused by, but amenable to a 6 am workout.

The true test of the schedule will be on the days DH works, because on those days I’m responsible for all of the chores at the house in the morning, so I probably won’t have time to drive over and work Ruby. So my tentative plan right now is to focus on Cinna on the days he works (since she’s at the house and readily available!) and then try to work Ruby on the days he’s off. So we’ll see how it goes. I don’t have to stick with this schedule if I don’t like it, I can go back to my normal schedule. But it would be really nice if I could drag myself out of bed early enough in the mornings to miss the heat of the day and keep both horses in work!

While still managing plenty of down time to relax and unwind.

What about you? Does your schedule change during the summer if you're trying to beat heat and humidity?

PS. Also, this post will be going out on Miss Cinna's FIFTH birthday. Happy birthday little monster! You're getting so grown up!