September 2022

 September is chaos.

September will always be chaos. It's one of my absolutely favourite months because I love the whole

back-to-school vibe and I always have. However, I feel like I've often gotten hung up on the idea of September meaning "back to a more structured schedule" when really it's just a trick to balancing so many schedules.

This September was the first September in years that I, myself, was not taking classes so balancing my own course schedule on top of my kids' stuff didn't happen. However, my contract for one job (academic-based) was renewed for another semester, so a lot of the workload picked up in the latter half of the month. Additionally, I had interviewed for and been hired for another position that is also education-based, so the end of September was an increased workload on top of adjusting to a new role.

It's no surprise then that I didn't really get to check anything off my allthethingsididnthavetimetodolist

✅ Writing

Making progress. It's slow, but fairly consistent. I write a little bit every other day or so. Sometimes it's more words and sometimes it's just notes, but I'm happy with what I'm doing. There are a lot of thoughts rattling around in my head and I still get hung up on 'perfection' when I'm working on the actual novel itself, but I'm making words and that's what's important. That and the fact that I like the project that I'm working on right now. It's new (the one I started in the spring) and not trying to re-write/fix something from 5+ years ago, which is kind of nice.

✅ Make Progress in the Job Search

While I still haven't found a permanent position, the two positions that I have at the moment are in areas that I can develop and expand my current skills and work from home. One contract (the recently renewed one) ends in December 2022 and the other is only 10 hours/week until June 2023, so I've been polishing up and sending out my resume and cover letter quite a bit in the past little while.

✅ Make Friends

Oh, this one has been haunting me for years. It's hard to sustain relationships when you're balancing work and school and a marriage and family. Especially since I like to just sit and decompress when I finally catch a minute to myself. However, I've been able to get together with several other moms from my kids' school this month and make some pretty good connections. It's been nice.

I'm hoping that October will be a little less hectic, but I doubt it will be.