After sharing my morning schedule and seeing the comments, I was concerned that it gave the inaccurate impression that all of my time was equally structured. I’ll share a little more so you have a fuller picture.

>> Oh dear. You wake up really early. Really, really, early. No wonder you’re tired at night. If it works for you – so great. For myself it would never work. I can’t function well when I’m tired.<<

I don’t think any of us function well when we’re tired!

For years I used to stay up very late, then wake up between 8:30 – 9 am – as a homeschooling mom I had that flexibility – and every morning before my eyes were open I felt behind schedule and undisciplined. I stayed up late because that’s when I had time to myself after my teens went to sleep, but it made waking up early impossible. Nine years ago I very consciously changed my sleep habits to get up earlier and go to sleep earlier. It took a lot of consistent effort but I felt good about how I was using my time when I woke up.

I gradually evolved to a wakeup time of between 5:30 – 6:30 throughout the year. I don’t set a timer; whenever my body wakes up, I get up. This summer I chose to get up at 4:45 and that was a gift to myself, a way that I prioritized my needs at a time that my schedule was so packed that I wouldn’t have had any possibility of quality time for myself otherwise. I deeply cherish my morning time. This is the foundation that give me the inner quiet that I draw on for the rest of my day.

I usually take a nap daily from 1 – 2 pm, though that didn’t happen regularly during my hectic summer period. So my energy is fairly stable throughout the day. But by the time the kids go to sleep, I want to be by myself. There’s a lot of togetherness when all of the kids are home and I need some space to regroup. Even if I can do more at that time, I don’t want to fill my schedule that full. That means leaving dinner dishes in the sink almost every night to be tackled in the morning when I’m fresh. I don’t like waking up to them, but I like even less the idea of working from dawn to dark. 🙂

>>Also, when your time is budgeted so closely, what do you do when the unexpected happens, or, worse, when you’re not feeling well? It doesn’t look like there’s much slack in this system.<<

I have to differentiate between unusual times like this summer’s intensity and my normal schedule – during the summer there were about six weeks when I needed to push myself to use all of my time well, to get things done and to feel calm and relaxed about it all, from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. That was the Superwoman period, and that was a much better way to handle it than to collapse or be resentful of all the demands on me. But that’s not my regular schedule, it’s definitely not my ideal, and with summer vacation, the wedding/sheva brachos behind me and my course in it’s final week, I’m now easing into a more typical daily schedule.

I very much value margin and consciously build it into my schedule. I’m the one who creates my schedule and I’m the one who can make changes; I’m not tied to anything that doesn’t work for me. If one day I’m tired and want to sleep in, I can do that.

It’s true that my morning routine is very structured, but it’s full of activities that energize me and give me the ability to go through the rest of my day in a positive way – they don’t stress or deplete me. I feel relaxed as I go into actively getting the kids ready for school, knowing I’ve already done the most important things for myself.

The later morning has less structure, because it needs less structure – that’s when I do the things that need to be done, and they’ll get done without careful scheduling. My self-care activities won’t.

>>You are doing an incredible amount, and getting it done through a combination of efficiency/good planning, dedication to the cause, mental conditioning, and sheer physical grit. If it was me, I would have burnt out long ago. I hope that you find a way to get done what needs to be done in a way that’s healthy and nurturing and forgiving for YOU, not just for all those around you. <<

Yes, I do a lot. Some of what I do I don’t have a lot of say about, but there are other activities that are my choice, and I’m careful about what I take on. I think about each activity before committing to it, to be sure it justifies the time invested.

I’ve begun taking the four youngest kids to horseback riding two afternoons a week, and the time needed to get the paperwork set up was significant, in addition to the actual time spent at the riding lessons. I paused for a while before moving forward with this to reflect on if it was going to stretch me too far in combination with other things I have going on. But I value that so it’s worth it for me.

The same thing with taking ds12 and ds7 to private speech therapy every week – it’s important to me so I make time for it. Last year they stayed home one day a week to make this possible. This year I thought about how they could get the benefit of the therapy and I could still have some time on that day for myself.

I decided to send them to school on their van; I pick them up from school an hour after they get there, take them to therapy, bring them back to school an hour before they need to go home, and they go home on the van. Though this adds an additional forty minutes of driving to my day, it gives me two hours – an hour after they leave and an hour before they come home. I also use the two hours when I’m driving by myself to listen to my course lectures or something else of interest to me that I wouldn’t be able to listen to with kids in the car.

Doing a lot for others doesn’t mean that I don’t have time for myself. I must have me-time. It’s not possible to give to others without filling ourselves up constantly and consistently, or we absolutely will feel burned out.

Last week I requested a change of the speech therapy day, because it coincides with a women’s monthly activity that I really enjoy. Last year I jumped at the opportunity for the boys to have sessions at this clinic when a spot for them opened up, though it meant giving up this women’s activity. This year I’m putting the women’s activity it into my schedule at the beginning of the year and building other commitments around it.

School in the north has been cancelled because of security issues due to the war, so the kids have been home this week. None of us know how much longer the schools will be closed due to the war, and I find it slightly ironic that I’m writing all about how my schedule is working so well for me….and now I need to create a new routine for having the kids home all day, with the limitations the war places on activities outside the home.

Now that my husband and I can’t have our daily walk together, I’m especially glad that I prioritized scheduling that time from the very first day that school began, and we had three weeks to enjoy spending that time together before it was cut short.

I eat really well, I think good thoughts, I take time for myself regularly, in addition to being available for others – life is full but I’m not stressed or deprived. If someone looks just at what and how much I do instead of how I do it, they could come to the conclusion that I’m depleted or on the edge of burnout, but I’m not at all. I love my life!

Avivah