When you put in the work, sometimes it sucks. But man oh man does it feel good when you’re close to the finish line.

That’s how I’m finally feeling today after putting myself in a box for the last three days. Not only did I need to crank out some pages for my MFA thesis preface, but I also had to complete another round of revisions on the actual manuscript. The due date my mentor and I chose together was last Friday, but he gave me a pass cuz, well the whole world is in chaos for one thing.

And though it’s no excuse, I’m also now being expected to pick up as many extra hours at work as I possibly can. This is mostly because my husbands income is being reduced during this challenging time.

My boss and my team are coming out guns blazing on a new project and I put my PM hat on for the three weeks while the real project manager was wrapping up her current gig. She started last week, thank goodness. I still worked like a full time chimp but this week I’m going to dial it back.

I’m gonna ease into a support role. I love my new PM, for real. She’s a fellow princess. My nickname for her is Princess KK and hers for me is Princess SheShy. Those names were established in the 90’s when we last worked together and became friends. After that she moved on to bigger and better things while I remained in Nebraska.

She’s a rockstar at both team and project management. She can have all that shit. Imma sit over in my corner of the universe taking notes and writing documentation and adding detail to the Jira tickets and confluence. That’s my happy place, keeping quiet and only interjecting when I feel something is really important. It will be easier to keep my damn mouth shut with such a strong leader.

The other thing that starts today for real is online learning for my kids. Last week was dedicated to “enrichment learning” while the teachers figured out their plans for how to teach in their pajamas.

When I pressed my son about doing enrichment work, he just said “mom, nobody is doing that.” He spent most of the week playing video games. My co-workers tried to make me feel better by saying that playing video games was enrichment. Haha! This weekend my email in-box was flooded with tons of instructions and links from all their teachers. Sure, the kids got these also, but who do you think will be responsible for making sure they actually get up and out of bed and on the Zoom meetings? There will be assignments and video instruction and quizzes and tests online.

Yeah.. all that starts today. I have to remind myself that balance is key and also try and take my friend Michelle’s advice and go with the flow. Give myself a little slack you know, partially because it is a stressful time in the world but also because I’m only human and can’t freaking do everything perfectly all the time.

Anyway, all that time in the box this past weekend was rough but I feel great about my progress and almost ready to send those pages off to my mentor. That’s my priority this morning (besides finally getting back to walking on my treadmill and writing).

At 10am I have a two hour work meeting and so the homeschooling will be delayed for a few hours today.

That’s it. Short and sweet. Balance and flow. Time to go.

Peace and Love!

~Miss SugarCookie