What do you do all day?

Working hard, or hardly working?

You would think that not having a job would mean I suddenly have 8 free hours during the day.

Somehow, that does not feel like the case.

It’s crazy how quickly that time filled right back up again. It’s like trying to dig a hole in dry sand at the beach. You dig and dig, but the sand keeps dropping back in. I cleared out a job, and now that time has filled in with housework, looking for jobs, this newsletter, kid things, and attempting to launch a freelance career.

Let’s go through a day in the life

On a typical weekday morning, I’m up around 6 am to get my kindergartener up for school. I help her get dressed, throw some breakfast at her that she probably won’t eat, make her lunch, brush her hair, and we’re out the door to make the bus that usually comes at precisely 7:12 am.

Yes, that is ungodly early.

Bundled up for the bus stop.

Then, I have to come home and prepare the 3-year-old for whatever he’s doing that day. He’s either heading to my in-laws, my mom’s, or preschool. Depending on the day, these drop-offs happen between 8 and 9 a.m. If I’m dropping him off at my mom’s, I tend to sit around chatting for a while or even just spending the day with them for something else to do.

But usually, I’m home between 9 and 9:30 am, and I sit down at my desk to “work.”

Working these days involves combing LinkedIn for jobs and then deciding which to apply to that day. I’ve been trying to dedicate specific days to job hunting and applying, but it’s hard to do this when you don’t know when a good opportunity might pop up. And you’ve got to be quick with these job postings. So many of them have 100+ applicants within hours of being posted. At that point, it’s almost a waste of time to even bother unless you’re catching the role as soon as it’s been posted.

It’s also so easy to get stuck doom-scrolling LinkedIn. It’s mainly an echo chamber of “here’s what to do/what not to do when looking for a job” and “here’s what I think about AI”, but every once in a while, something useful pops up, and it’s good to keep an eye out for jobs being posted from people in my network since referrals are supposedly the only way you’ll get a job interview these days.

The time-suck that is job applications

I already complained about this last week, so I won’t get into it again, but it is time-consuming to apply for a job. Depending on how similar the role is to others I have applied to, it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour per application. Using AI speeds this up considerably, but I still make a lot of edits to make sure everything sounds like something I actually wrote from scratch.

It’s not even the application itself that takes up a lot of time; it’s finding the jobs to apply to. Sure, LinkedIn will surface recommendations, but I have to read through the description, look the company up on Glassdoor, etc. I could spend hours and hours just doing this. Plus, I have a shortlist of companies I would really like to work for, so I check their job openings basically daily.

The freelance struggle

I’ve also been looking for freelance opportunities, right now almost exclusively by applying like mad to gigs on Upwork. This is mostly an exercise in futility, since although I’ve gotten a few bites, they’ve all ghosted me after our initial conversation. It is not easy to build up a freelance client roster from scratch, and anyone who tells you otherwise is definitely selling something. No, really. I’m now inundated with people trying to sell me courses that will show me how to make 6-figures a year freelancing with no experience.

Nevertheless, I persist. I need a portfolio to get better jobs, but I can’t build a portfolio without a job. We love a merry-go-round.

Will the house ever be clean?

TL;DR - no. No, it will not. I could spend all day every day doing chores and never feel like I’m “done.” Of course, that makes sense. The laundry will never be done. I’m struggling with that concept, but it’s true. There will always be laundry. Likewise, the bathroom will always need to be cleaned. There will always be dishes to wash. These aren’t tasks you complete once and can be done forever.

I’m thinking I need to get myself on a schedule of some sort here, so it at least doesn’t feel like these tasks are always looming over my head. One of my aspirations for the year is to be better about decluttering in an effort to make all this housework feel more manageable, and I also need to re-focus on that.

I clean this playroom constantly and it looks like this five minutes later.

Other life admin

Depending on the day of the week, I try to squeeze in some life admin stuff. That includes checking in on our finances, paying the bills, and making any appointments we need. It also involves checking in on the weekly schedule to make sure everyone can get where they need to go when they need to go there. Making sure dinners are planned for the week and the kids have enough snacks. Grocery lists and grocery shopping. Basically, this category is all the mental load tasks the primary parent takes on.

Writing things

I remain wildly proud of myself for getting this newsletter published on time twice a week. The advice I’ve always seen about anything having to do with writing is you have to be consistent, and I think this is the most consistent I have ever been with a project like this.

I’m still finding my groove as far as deciding what to write about and not having every post feel like a major brain dump, but I’m enjoying the process of writing regularly.

My creative writing efforts have stalled over the last few weeks, and I need to re-focus on that.

The care and keeping of the children

My kindergartener gets home around 2:15 every day, and those hours between 9 and 2 go by fast. It helps when I am meticulous about planning my days and not putting too much on my to-do list so I can focus on getting things done before she gets home. I like to have “work” wrapped up by the time she gets off the bus so I have more bandwidth to focus on spending time with her.

To be fair, she usually just wants to zone out in front of the TV or her iPad when she gets home, which is understandable. Sometimes, we’ll do a craft or run some errands, but after a day at school, she’s fairly content to decompress for a little while.

My 3-year-old gets home any time between 2:30 and 4:30, depending on where he is. We pick him up from preschool twice a week at 4:30, so that gives me and Julia a couple of afternoons a week where it’s just the two of us.

Then there’s dinner and baths and the bedtime battles. Some nights are better than others. Sometimes my husband is home and shares the load. Sometimes it’s just the three of us, and no one likes the dinner I made, and they won’t stay in their beds at bedtime. Sometimes we all go to bed at 7:30 pm.

I do feel like I’m not putting in enough effort to be a more engaged parent and, like, interact with my kids. There’s definitely been too much screen time this winter. But I also don’t particularly like playing with them. Is that not why we own so many toys? Go forth, play with them by yourselves!

Like mother like son.

What does it mean to be productive?

It’s weird, not having a job. I still haven’t gotten past the idea that I should be working. That I need to be doing something “productive.” I’m not even doing any of the things I imagined I would do if I didn’t have to work anymore. Though that’s likely because I actually very much do need to find employment again.

But I think I need to move past the way our society defines productivity. I’m definitely doing quite a bit here every day, even if I’m not being paid for it. I imagine a lot of stay-at-home moms feel similarly. I also think I need to be careful not to build out a schedule that is too wildly different from working full-time. Eventually, I’ll have a job again, and I don’t want that transition to be too disruptive.

Now, if we win the lottery before my severance runs out, I may have a different perspective on this.