On Monday morning I woke up at 3:45am feeling anxious about how busy my life has become. Finally at 5:00 I got out of bed, made coffee and wrote in my journal for a while. I find that journaling helps me narrow down solutions to some of the bigger problems I have to face and on that morning I wrote about needing to manage all of the different things I have going on right now.
When I enrolled in two classes in January I knew I was going to have a full schedule until the end of the semester, but a few unexpected things have come up that had I known about may have convinced me to hold off for a while on the classes. Since the beginning of February we’ve decided to explore the idea of putting our house on the market, our son’s schooling situation has changed and I’ve had to increase my hours at work by six hours a week in order to keep some important benefits.
So how am I finding the time to write something other than essays for my class right now? Well back in December when I received my summons to jury duty in the mail I thought I was being clever by deferring it to February and for the past two days I’ve been sitting on uncomfortable benches in the hallway of the courthouse. Thankfully I had been warned about the jury selection process requiring an awful lot of waiting around, so I brought along lots of stuff to keep my busy.
A lot of folks here are complaining about all of this down time but I’ve decided to welcome this unexpected reprieve. Yesterday I got caught up on some reading for one of my classes, and today I’m getting the opportunity to write for my much-neglected blog. I’ve also had time to reread the journal I’ve been keeping for the past few months which reminded me that problems I’ve been overwhelmed by in the past have come and gone. It helped me relax a little and realize that I can do this; I can finish these classes, be a good parent and systematically work toward putting our house up for sale.
Who knows, if they keep me here a while longer I may even have time to finish Pride and Prejudice. I started it in December when I thought I’d have plenty of time to plow through my booklist. This jury selection process really isn’t so bad but if I am actually chosen to serve for this trial, which is expected to go for two to three weeks, I may find myself bursting into tears in front of the attorneys and the judge. Either way, I guess I’d be off the hook. I’m pretty sure they’d let me go at that point.
Lofty Minded in Alaska 