I Don't Know

How do you find time?

This is not a rhetorical question, though I wish it were. But honestly, I just don't know how anyone finds time to do anything. I don't know what I've been doing with my time, exactly, but I feel like I'm not getting things accomplished at work, or at home, or with family, or with my actual "this is what I would like to be doing with my life" endeavors, either.

But here's an update, for what it's worth.

Work
So, BlogHer has gone and got itself some offices. Which means that I have had to remind myself what it's like for most of the country -- getting up and showering and getting dressed (in non-sweats) and showing up at a location that is not, you know, my living room. This is a huge shift for me, a complete shock to the system.

Not only that, but the offices are located out of San Francisco.

So I bought myself a car. GAH.

(A car that, it turns out, is also Breezily Elegant. Perfect! More on that later.)

But now all of a sudden I have a whole new daily routine. My commute is over an hour each way, which means I have just lost two and a half hours I used to spend blogging, and reading blogs, and who knows what else. (At least, before the conference came and ate away that time, too.)


Personal Life
Things with Ish are going well, except that my commuting an hour+ in one direction while he's commuting and hour+ in the other direction has taken a huge toll on our "quality time." As you can imagine. Shuffling two apartments and four cats and his comedy shows and my rehearsals is kind of crazy. I feel like something's got to give on that front, too.


Looking Ahead
Um. So in the next couple months, there's like, a millionteen things going on and they are all great and fun and wonderful, but I have got to get a handle on them before they run away from me and it's suddenly Christmas Eve and I'm all like, what? I thought it was Halloween.


So if any of you have any brilliant suggestions for how and when to incorporate daily blogging into my new life schedule, I am ALL EARS.

Comments

  1. Well, don't you have a LAPTOP??? There's always the lunch hour, the potty runs, and the occasional railroad crossing at which you could pound out a few thoughts. Where there is a will (and a MacBook) there is a way.

    You have people, I tell ya, PEOPLE. People who follow the blog, who freely pry into your life (with your blessing, of course), people who are inspired by your lapses between blogs, because it proves that we all have lives that we blog around--not blogs that we live around.

    Good luck with the new gig!! And blog when you can, what you can, even if it's just one random thought.

    :)

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  2. Dictate entries in the car? Buy a little recorder and record ideas or write whole entries as you think of them. Not only will they be easy to type out later, this routine will polish up your writing (not that it needs it, just that it will act as a rough draft.)

    Unrelated: Hour+ commute is horrible, but the good news is: you can listen to books on tape! I love them.

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  3. Following up on anonymous, if you think you could dictate, you could get a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking where you get the computer to recognize your speech and type it out for you.

    I think everyone feels behind, maybe normally we're too far gone to be able to say it.

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  4. Ouch...going from work-at-home to 2.5 hours total commute...that sucks. I would seriously HATE to take a job and have them flip the script on me like that...damn.

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  5. i have the same problem...! since i started my new (not so new now) job a year ago, my blogging time has dropped significantly.

    if you get some answers, please share them with us.

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  6. I think Mam's got the answer. You have a laptop. Buy voice recognition software, dictate to your laptop in the car on the way to work. By the time you get to work you have something that can be saved and edited in the evening or at lunch.

    The other option would be, where are you working now? Probably East or South Bay with the long commute. Is it possible to mass transit commute? Or drive in on Monday so you have the car to get from the station to the office then use mass transit back and forth until Friday when you drive home. That way you'd have the transit time to blog during the week.

    Last but not least, move closer to work. My honey and I did that earlier this year. It makes life so much better.

    Good luck! Just remember we're all still here. We're not going anywhere.

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  7. Forgot one more. Carpool. Lets you use the fast lane so you get to work faster and you can switch off driving with your carpool buddy and blog on the days that they are driving.

    OK. Done now.

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  8. Offices? That seems so un-BlogHer-ry of them. The expense of owning a car and commuting not even counting the additional time lost... well I guess you must REALLY love your job. While the voice recognition software sounds like a decent solution, I think you should demand a return to telecommuting 4 days a week. How much face time do they need?

    Now what about this breezy elegant car of yours?

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  9. K,
    If I had half of the following you have I think I'd give up sleeping in order to write my blog.

    We love you and we will wait with baited breath for your entries when ever you find the time to write them. Just don't quit.

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  10. Try public transit. It'll be better for the environment and your sanity, and give you time to crack open that laptop and blog. (Some buses and whatnot even have wifi!)

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  11. Offices? Who's bright idea was that?

    Y'all were already living the dream! Why's they go and mess it up?

    And just blog when you can. We will all still be here! :)

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  12. I've suddenly been asked to have a blog as part of my duties as a "message board host" at a popular magazine's website. And I've been asking myself, "where am I going to find the time to blog?"--and I don't even have the kind of commute you do!

    Some of my other blogging friends--who contribute to several blogs, not just one personal one--had some good ideas, none of which involved catch-as-catch-can time with the laptop or dictation software (great idea, though).

    1) Write several posts on the weekend (in Word?), or whenever you have regular down time. Then set them up to automatically post later in the week. I don't know if my site will allow delayed or automated posting (or whatever it's called), and so far I haven't written anything in advance. But I like the idea.

    2) Guest posting. I see mommy-bloggers doing this, trading places with someone else. But I've seen others (BitchPhD comes to mind) have someone else handle the posting duties for a brief stint while they're on vacation without reciprocating.

    3) Q&A. I don't have a following yet, so I don't expect people to be beating down my door to ask me questions but YOU do (have a following, I mean). So you tack up a post where you ask people to submit questions in the comments, and then you have blog fodder for a few days (and YOU decide what's TMI or off-limits, so if someone asks something you don't want to reveal--well, you're good at making up something funny and totally changing the subject. Yes, you are!).

    4) Pimp your blogroll. I'm making this a regular feature on my blog, because I have a lot of favorites, and it's easy to say "so-and-so is cool, here's why I like him/her, go check out his/her blog." :)

    Yes, I'm wordy. And THAT's probably the biggest reason why I'm wondering where I'm going to get time to blog--because once I get started, I tend to write a LOT--which takes time. So I should probably work on just writing a little at a time.

    If you have to blog less than you used to, that's OK. Just don't quit! We'd miss you too much. :)

    P.S. I used to use my myspace page as my url on these things, but now it's a real blog. ;)

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  13. I have a similar schedule, except mine involves band gigs, grad school, and a 40+ hour a week job. The only place I can find "extra" time is to start my day at 4:30 a.m. Not fun, but it works.

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  14. You guys are great! Thanks for the feedback.

    I realize in reading my post I sound kind of bitchy, when really I am just kind of tired and feeling harried, which I always feel guilty about because I don't even have kids, you know?

    I like the weekend idea a lot. I like the idea of dictating, but don't think I'd be very good at it...but could be worth a shot!

    -k

    p.s. I do love working for/with BlogHer and will write more about the whole shift in locale, etc. later, but they have been really great about it, and it's actually a really exciting opportunity. :)

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  15. You've got to get them to agree to telecommuting at least part-time. My roommate used to live in the South Bay and worked from home 3 days a week. Now she lives with me in the city, can walk to work, and umm... still is home quite often. But yeah telecommute. Or talk them into getting a tiny satellite office in the city. But you've got to do research first, like how many BlogHer employees live in the city and would use the office and crap like that.

    I have been known to blog a post and then hold it for a couple of days before making it live. You could do that.

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  16. I'm not sure there is any really good answers. There are only 24 hours in a day. Should you write OK posts everyday, or a better post every three days? And if you are always writing, when will you have time to read anyone else? What fun is that?

    I never understood people who are bored. The problem is that there is too many things to do in a limited time.

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  17. I would say don't feel guilty about your blog, what I mean is if you don't get to blogging as much as you want, don't start feeling guilty. Otherwise it will feel like a job, add more pressure, and by extension you might avoid blogging. Just realize that you will do it when you can and you will fall into a schedule just in time for the next life shift to take you by surprise.

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  18. Yep yep yep! Telecommute!

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  19. i think you should force your cousin to move to san francisco and then start an event planning/pr/catering company with them!

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