Week 22

 It’s been 21 weeks since we stopped going out to work and the girls came back from school and college. I counted today to track the time as another week got over and yet another began.

When it all started we though we’ll be back in a few weeks, a month or maybe two. Now we have no clue.

The statistics continue to grow. The government has exhausted it’s resource, the people have lost their patience and the pressure seems to keep growing work-wise, household-wise. And as we crib about these on video call with far-away friends and family, the horrors keep unfolding across the globe.

Lebanon is covered in mounds of ashes and scars in the aftermath of a horrifying blast. A plane bringing home stranded Indians crashed in Kerala the day before killing a dozen. The rest of the state is pulling bodies out of landslide wrecks. Assam and coastal Karnataka are flooded and so are large parts of China. And in the months before we saw two cyclones, an almost-war situation in Ladakh and devastating locust attack which wiped out hundred thousand acres of crops.

Is the world coming to an end? Yeah, maybe someday. But this, a lot of us may survive. And then they will look back and tell the stories.

How will my family remember this spell? At the time when they all had to live with their mother’s paranoia, when the neighbourhood kids were yelling and playing, all their mom did was procure a cycle and get it furnished. When all their friends were chilling, their mom got them to help with the cooking and cleaning as theirs was only one of the few flats now calling maids or cooks or ordering takeaways.

I probably am overdoing the safety bit, and that still may not be enough. And the other may have more fun and still remain safe. Things may look very different when we look back and I would probably look like the paranoid hypermom.

But then, looking around, looking ahead, this is who I am, and this is what I’ll have to continue doing. TIll the world starts to heal. And we have no idea when that will happen. So I have to continue with what I have: hope, and faith, and prayers.

Finding time to write/Writing to find time

Once she grows up and goes to school, I will get back to…

Most mothers would have their own choice of words to complete the sentence. What of the mothers whose kids have ‘gone to school’? They probably mean that once they are done with ensuring homework is done, and the uniforms are ready, and the lunch is packed and the kid is back from the three other classes, and the birthday party, they will complete their sentence.

My kid has gone to college and I still hadn’t started acting on my ‘dream list’. Just attempting to write a short post every day started leading to continuous headaches from lack of sleep. And the frustration of not being able to anything well enough. So, I got into soul searching/serious project planning mode.

Step 1: Excel sheet of all the tasks I ‘need to do’ and ‘want to do’ in a day.

Step 2: Assign estimated time for each task except sleep (added numbers for the worst-case scenario too-so driving time varied from 40 mins to 2 hours)

Step 3: Subtract Sum of all task timings from 24:00:00

Sleep time came to 3.5 hours

Step 4: Freeze timings for all non-negotiable tasks and steal minutes from everything else. Sleep 5.5 hours.

Step 5: Shift some tasks for weekend only (can’t afford to read every day), knock-out some tasks, try multi-tasking (driving and eating breakfast) and hope and pray but the Excel sheet still shows 6.5 hours of sleep.

As all good project managers do, I didn’t even factor in things beyond my control (illness, maid’s illness, unforeseen tasks, etc).

And finally, as all good project managers also do, I decided to ignore the Math and believe that something will work out. I will exercise and read and write and still do justice to the office and household, one day. 

For now, let me be glad that I managed to complete this post today.

2 Minute Posts

I don't know if I will get time so will have to manage with a micro post today. 

In any case  that is what we all have time  for today, after macro demands on time and attention.

As a professional, I was shocked a few years ago when a client wanted to transform an 180 hour training to eLearning. He wanted to keep it in chunks of 3-hour sessions. We took a few weeks to convince him to try 45 minute modules.

Now we create 2-minute  microlearnings. Because according to studies that is the amount of information users can digest at a time, now.

Stories are told in 100 words (Hemmingway wrote a classic in six words) and social media tornadoes are brewed in 140 characters.

There is a message here for bloggers like me. Or a really good excuse.

Bliss!

Sometimes it can be sitting in a car and having biscuits for breakfast.

It is a space of your own, without negative vibes all around, knowing that you can be yourself, without the need to explain, to justify, or even ask.

It is a time of your own, knowing that just this once, you don’t have to rush for completing something which you don’t even want to do.

I have a bit of both-for the moment.

And it is Bliss.