This week has been….a week. That is the simplest way I can put that. It is currently 11 AM, so I want to try to zone into this and have the post written, prettied up and posted by 11:45.

I am very glad classes will be starting up again tomorrow. As much as my impatience to graduate stays sky high, I just want to get it done, so breaks kill me and all I can think about is getting back to classwork and just getting it done.

This week I feel was definitely nowhere near as productive as I was hoping, but that brings up the topic of mental health I suppose as a partner and remote based on top of that. I am very anxious for spring and summer to finally arrive, I need to be able to leave the house more. There is a strange world of isolation I live in and I can feel as winter continues it wears me down. My impatience to move out equally wears me down though as my own self-sabotage I suppose.

It is very strange explaining to people what I do, especially family. When I first started applying for jobs, I knew I wanted remote. Well more so I needed remote; no car, no sitter for my son, and at the time he was still nursing every hour. The responses I get are often strange or upsetting and also lead to the continual wear down:

• A good mom wouldn’t work so much (I work in two hour intervals, so I can play with Todd most the day)
• Working from home isn’t real work, so why are you stressed (work + school + single mom is stressful no matter your job)
• How can you trust someone you haven’t met (Well, that is what trust is, and Dee hasn’t stabbed me in the back unlike some of the people I live with soooo)
• You are just a partner, so what you do for the company doesn’t really matter anyway, so just quit and get a local job
• And the continual being “farmed out” to do unpaid work by my family because as family I am not supposed to take what I do seriously and spend 3-5 hours doing something unpaid- which bothers me alot because it resonates deeply with feeling like what I do isn’t important enough to matter to anyone but myself.

This week has ended with a great internal battle to push myself forward against the storm around me and try to grow. That is probably a good reason why I am more of a dandelion rather than a rose- I will figure out how to grow in a crack in the cement with no water rather than shrivel up because the soil isn’t just right.

But this brings me to 11:13 and needing a quick pause as Todd is pulling at my leg for breakfast part 2. 11:18 and I’m back. Mom + ADD/ADHD and I am forever being pulled away from being able to spend more than a half hour on a task in one go, but I try and continue. 7-8 hours of work and I usually count it as 5-6 because I know a decent chunk of it includes me getting pulled away and having to regroup.

This week has been:

• Bringing in a new partner and spending some “helicopter” time daily trying to figure out is work speed- although I keep requesting a recording of his work flow, I hope that one of my unchecked messages this morning has it.
• Changing up some details on Linkedin
• Our first monthly call with a group of the six of us, that in itself needs fine tuning (I sent reminders the day before, morning of, 10 min before and it still took 15-20 min after actual start for five of us to join)
• Building a KPI sheet (this needs fine tuning, especially in mine, figuring out what of what I do can be attached to a number)
• Building a good amount of videos showing productivity and flow hacks and explainers for the new partner
• Trying to figure out how to think more abstractly (but part of the struggle is the more the outside world weighs on me, the more inward I turn to my analytical side)
• Getting a strange connection message (although this is common and I could write a book on “why are you the way you are” this is the first that attempted a professional connection first) There was more to this message series along the lines of very creepy “You are so beautiful can I have personal connection account/contact info”

• Restarting the interview process for some
• Continuing GMB posts
• Continuing editing blog posts
• Having a longer call trying to fine tune the Mandy process because the scatter with it makes it hard to do (personally) and then make my anxiety flare and kill my focus
• Sending out GSC reports (I really need to figure out how to get this to take less time)
• Restarting Quora answers on my account (I found if I write 1-2 a day with marketing in mind, I can toss in a personal one to keep it interesting, so I can write 3-5 a day)
• Some Linkedin pages were made
• And my usual odd bits of things I don’t write and just do if they are quick win, so I know I did them but have no idea what they are by the start of my next week on Sundays

This week was Spring Break for me though. Granted the most break item I did was tone down work hours some because I still feel the burnout creeping around and getting my 17th tattoo. Another tattoo dedicated to my Dad, as we water the classic creature-features whenever I go over, so why not combine my Coffee/Tea love with a little bit of horror.

I also spent this week dealing with a lot of illness. Todd got sick around day 1, I was up all night dealing with that. Then I got it and after 12 hours of not being able to control the illness, I went to the doctor for anti-nausea meds to make it stop. Wednesday my friend had surgery, so I stayed over to help her because she is on bedrest for a week. Friday Todd got whatever we had….again. A lot of sleep lost this week… as a result I am fighting my temper, but know if I nap I won’t sleep tonight…so hello caffeine.

But at 11:31 I think I will wrap this up and try to meet that time goal. I am finding I HAVE to do that to get things done better…scatter brain struggles.