Well, the jury is in and apparently it’s not easy working two full-time jobs (weird, right?)
I work a 40 hour week Monday to Friday during the day at my office job, and then at the gelateria Wednesday/ Thursday/ Friday nights (right after the office job – luckily for me they are only a few blocks from each other) and Saturday & Sundays from late afternoon to around 11pm. So my free time now consists of Mondays and Tuesdays from 5pm till I go to bed, and Saturdays & Sundays from when I wake up to 1pm. Not a lot. In those short time frames I need to fit in cooking, cleaning, laundry, doctor appointments, esthetician appointments, shopping, working for my online business, and oh yeah, all my homework for my TESOL course…and my poor friends get shafted constantly to make room for all these things.
It’s only been a few weeks but I am starting to figure out how to do this. Here’s what has been helping me:
1. Learning how to maximize time. This is something moms seem to be good at but as I do not have offspring I haven’t yet acquired this skill. For me, this means doing lots of little things as one huge thing one time. Case in point: cooking. I grocery shop on Monday nights and batch cook on Tuesday nights, and that food has to last me until the next Monday night because I know I won’t have any free time until then.
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This is a Tuesday night cooking session – 14 lunches and dinners and 5 breakfasts (I sometimes eat dinner/lunch for breakfast). I spent about $50 on groceries and cooked for 3 hours and I now have 19 meals to get through the next week! |
I’m struggling by mid-morning to keep my lids open, I eat lunch at my desk and
then take advantage of the couches in the staff lounge at work to rest my eyes
over my lunch hour. If my alarm goes off at 6:30am and I just can’t get up, I
forgo trying to look nice for work and sleep an extra 45 minutes. It’s not
worth feeling tired when you have a 18 hour day ahead of you.
schedule (including scheduling doing nothing) – I use my Gmail calendar which is synced
with my iPhone as well as a paper calendar on my desk at my office job, but I
went to Printable
Calendar and printed off April to September and I’m using these as my
“free time calendar” – I have my work schedule for both jobs on it as
well as my non-working/non-sleeping time because it’s all too easy to overbook
yourself without thinking about it. I don’t see my friends as much any more but
I’m not going to try to fit in birthdays and dinners and drinks and housewarmings just because I
feel guilty. I don’t have a lot of free time now so I’m only making time for
people who are special to me, and I’m not doing it every week. I write
everything in my calendar that needs to be done on my days off, including
cleaning, laundry, etc. and then I know how much time I’ll have left over (if
any) for fun things. I also like to schedule naps, then I get excited when I
get home and see “take nap” on the calendar!
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really hard on taking care of myself the best I can given these circumstances,
because if I get sick this will all go sideways. My body is not used to working
this long or this hard and it is already starting to protest. I take Oil
of Oregano every day to keep colds/flus at bay and if I feel something
coming on I start taking Redoxen Vitamin C tablets and this combination usually
works for me. I can’t do anything about the hours I get to sleep but I do
take valerian
root to try to get to sleep asap, since I still (and have always) had
a lot of problems getting to sleep. I don’t go out after work on the weekends
as much as I would like to because I don’t leave the shop until nearly midnight
and starting a night that late will just be trouble for the next day and will
keep rolling over into the following days.
saying no. I used to feel like I had to go to everything people invited me to,
because I didn’t want to miss out on anything and I am usually the one putting
effort into keeping friendships going. Now I am having to say no because if I
go out for dinner, I won’t be able to cook and then I’ll have to eat out every
meal all week, or wear dirty clothes all week because I couldn’t do my laundry.
Also living in an apartment means I have to plan that kind of stuff a little
more seriously – I can’t do laundry at 11pm or 6am, or cook or run my
dishwasher or things like that. So my timeframes are limited, and I need to plan for that.
until the end of September and I’m really hoping I can get into a groove where
I at least am coherent during the day. I had some spectacular fails at work
last week where I was so overtired that I would try to talk and gibberish would
come out. I am feeling a little more clearheaded this week and my feet hurt a
lot less, so I think I am adapting. Props to anyone who does this long-term,
this is by far the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life (I’ve had a pretty easy
life so far, thanks universe) and everyone I know is shocked (thanks
guys…haha) so I guess this is just the first time I’ve really wanted something.
And I’m going to get it.
Holy smokes! You are really working yourself! I worked two jobs when I was saving up for my first trip, but the schedule was not as crazy as this! (More like, 8:00am-4:00pm then 4:30pm-7:30pm during the week and just a few hours on the weekends). You are making what I did seem like nothing! Good luck keeping your mind clear and powering through. It seems like you are determined enough to make it work!
Oh, I am so jealous of that schedule. I would like to do that! But anything more than a full-time job is a ton of work, as you know. It doesn't matter if it's 10 more hours or 40!
My original intention was to get a part-time 20 hour a week job, but this second job just sort of quickly ballooned into managing the shop and I am getting paid a lot more than I thought I would so I am keeping my eyes on the prize (and I'm thinking it will probably be good to leave with more than the absolute bare minimum, which is what I planned…I could see that backfiring!)