The Kids are Finally in School, Now What?
It’s the first time in 10 years that I’ve had substantial, reliable, free childcare (aka public school.)
My youngest just started kindergarten and now I get 6 hours a day to myself.
I wasn’t sure what to do with all of my free time, so initially I worked.
On what? Anything and everything.
But soon, I realized the extra work wasn’t making me any happier.
For the past decade, I often attributed (ahem, blamed) my discontent on the fact that I was a mom of young children, beholden to everyone else’s schedules and needs.
But now I have 17.5+ hours of freedom a week (it takes a few hours to eat, nap and do chores/household management every day :)) so I have no one to blame for my discontent other than myself.
So, I want to start crafting a more proactive, meaningful life.
Work Less
I’m fortunate because I built my admission consulting business during a time in my life when I had very little free time (aka I was a mom of young children.) Pve put a lot of sweat equity into building the business so now it runs very well with a minimal investment of time.
I coach high schoolers and only mentor students between 4-5:30p on weekdays. As a result, I only accept 10 students maximum per class.
I’ve currently decided not to increase business volume much because I love one-to-one coaching and seeing the deep impact I can make on an individual’s life.
I’m fortunate to work for myself so I can determine the number of hours I want to work and the goals I want to achieve.
I also just read the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and love the fact that when he only checked work email one hour per week. His book makes me want to evaluate high-value activities that can grow my business, and stop distracting myself by chasing minutiae.
I force myself to work no more than 1-2 hours per day on top of the actual time I spend coaching students. I do this because if I worked all day when my kids are in school, I would have no bandwidth to interact or take care of them when they come home. (Mothers who work full-time for employers, I don’t know how you survive!)
Build More Community In Real Life
I realized one of the things that makes me the happiest is spending time with people.
Unfortunately, I’m an extreme extrovert who works from home alone.
Most weeks I try to schedule at least 3 weekday morning walks/hikes with friends, 2-3 trips to the gym, 1-2 days to see my elderly mom who’s 40 minutes away, and maybe 1-2 evening walks/phone calls.
I also built my admission consulting business to focus on live coaching via Zoom rather than coaching by email. I spend 60 to 90 minutes 3 to 5 times a week in busy season, live coaching teenagers.
When my busy season is over, I may do more podcast interviews which allow me to interact with and learn from people not normally in my social circle. I love learning and meeting new people so podcasting is an excellent hobby.
Quality Time with Family
One of my main priorities in this season of life is to not be so busy and tired that my family can’t enjoy each other.
We’re just starting the school year so I’m trying to get a grasp of how many commitments we want to have as a family. For example, my older daughter could easily be in 3+ activities a week, which is a lot of driving and creates a really disjointed schedule. My husband can go out 3 nights a week, I could go out 3-4 nights a week and if we kept at our current pace, we’d have maybe 1-2 nights a week where everyone is home together.
I don’t want so much chaos so we are experimenting to see what works.
My favorite activities are “drop in”, like drop-in soccer, tennis, social groups, exercise classes, etc. I don’t want high commitment extracurricular activities for anyone right now, because my highest commitment is my family, friends and students.
Hobbies
This is definitely a work in progress.
Aside from socializing and exercising, my biggest hobby is this blog and podcast.
I’m tempted to try to build up this passion project so it can be self sustainable (i.e. generate some sort of income). I’m not sure if I want to do that because it seems like a lot of work, whereas my admission coaching business already runs smoothly. However, it could be an interesting challenge so I may run a few experiments.
If you know a business that wants to sponsor a podcast episode or post, let’s talk!
(And yes, I’m realizing the heading for this section was hobbies and I just started talking business again. I can’t help it, I find entrepreneurship really creative and fun. I’m still trying to figure out how to rest and play more, so if you have tips on that, drop me a comment!)
Readers, how did your life and schedule change when your (youngest) children started school? What dreams, if any, did you start pursuing for yourself?
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