Without My Kids, I Have No Schedule
I don’t know how to structure my time.
Before my 50/50 Divorce Life, I wasn’t a married mom. I was a single-but-married mom. My ex-husband, Joseph, worked far away and wasn’t around.
I handled our son’s autism treatments. I handled all things related to insurance. I filled out hundreds of pages of forms every few months and then stood by my company’s only fax machine for ages to send them off. I attended all the school functions. I dropped everything to get the kids when they were sick. I stayed home the subsequent days. I got all the school supplies. I maintained the school event schedule and had the kids prepped accordingly. I did their laundry so their school’s stupidly inconsistent uniform policy was met. I never attended late afternoon meetings because I left work at the same time every day to pick up my kids. I planned everything.
Even during the pandemic, I handled everything. I managed the kids’ virtual schedules. I ensured they knew what Zoom address to log in for what class. I printed every damn handout and organized them for the week. I…
You get the drift.
Since having kids, everything was regimented. On Tuesdays, I left work a bit early to pick up the kids, swing by Wendy’s for dinner to go (don’t judge, it was the only place along the route), and make it on time for my daughter’s tutoring sessions. During that time I’d help my son with his projects in the tutoring facility’s tiny kitchen.
Our weekends revolved around birthday parties and kids’ activities.
My personal non-mom time was squeezed in between. I saw my friends when I put the kids to sleep and Joseph came home. I went grocery shopping on weekend mornings when Joseph could watch them. My appointments always happened before 3 pm so that I could make it on time to pick the kids up and have a buffer for traffic. I worked out after my kids went to sleep.
I didn’t decide when I did things. The kids’ needs determined my schedule.
But now, post-divorce, it’s different.
I have no schedule. And I feel lost.
Being a part-time parent is bad enough. But without them to allocate my time, I don’t know how to do anything.
I’m a procrastinator. With my kids’ strict schedules before the divorce, everything was on the edge of being late or done well in advance, knowing later time constraints.
For the past few months, since the renovations on my house finished, I feel like a lazy sloth. It’s one thing to have a stretch of six hours with unfilled time. It’s a whole other beast to have three days of unfilled time.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to do. I’ve got checklists telling me what needs to get done. In the absence of, “I need to fill out the forms tonight so that Joseph can drop them off on his way to work tomorrow”, there’s no urgency.
I kept my former house tidy because I wanted to lead the kids by example (unlike Joseph, who grew up in a pigsty of a home). Since I don’t have my kids until tomorrow, my house is a disaster. I’ll tidy up late tonight when the panic kicks in.
Three eBay sales need to be mailed. Did I package and label them all before heading out the door in the name of efficiency? Nope. I packaged up the one that is due and headed out, kicking the can down the road for the other two packages. I’ll do those when eBay tells me I’ve got a day before they’re late.
My shoe organizer has a paint chip on it. Before the divorce, that would get done as soon as the kids went to sleep so that I could get all painting supplies put away before they woke up and there was ample time to dry. Now, the paint can sits on top of it, waiting for me to cover the unsightly white particleboard underneath.
I have online classes I want to finish. Before, I would have done them during the day because the kids needed to see me at my desk because I feign having a real job that requires me to stare at a screen. Now I tell myself that I’ll finish them in a single stretch when I don’t have them for the weekend. Yeah…success rate with that strategy isn’t good.
I was never motivated to get anything done before the divorce. I did them out of urgency and necessity. Those aren’t there with the lack of time constraints.
Long periods mean that I think. When I think, I spiral down the rabbit hole of parental guilt and missing my kids. Then I bawl, and then I get tired, and then I nap.
In the past year, I haven’t worked a solid week of work. Combined. Part of me thinks I need to find another job just to keep myself busy but another part of me knows taking the classes is key to me finding a better paying job. Another part of me knows that my job is absurdly chill at the moment and I need to appreciate the lack of stress.
I wrote a schedule, figuring the visual blocks would help. They did not.
I tried various schedule and note-taking apps. They did not help either.
I’m trying to find an alternative in my house to using the dining table as a computer desk but my house is too small for me to put a desk anywhere. I even considered setting up shop on one of my kids’ desks under their loft bed but they’re too narrow and I feel adamant that the kids don’t feel like their rooms aren’t fully theirs.
My most productive time is when I’m on the couch with the laptop on my lap, however my actual job and the classes require a dual monitor. No problem, I’ll get one of those clip-on monitor extenders, right? Uh no, those suckers are like three hundred bucks. While I’m all in favor of throwing money at a problem, my new divorce budget no longer supports that lifestyle.
Before I get the “have you tried therapy?” comments, yes. I’ve done therapy for years. Right now I’m waiting on my insurance to figure out why I have login issues and after two weeks they still don’t have an answer. Without that, I can’t start back up again (previous therapist bailed due to Covid family issues). I have no aversion to therapy. But as a therapy pro, there are some things that aren’t easily fixed with one or two-hour sessions a week.
And so, here we are. Me, on the couch with the laptop, bitching about my inability to accomplish anything because I don’t have my kids to structure my time anymore. This article will get edited and sent for publishing only when the battery symbol silently warns me that I’m pushing my luck on time.
There was a time when I was desperate for alone time. Now, it’s my post-divorce perdition.