Today is the second annual Day in the Life event, hosted by Trish at Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity the Blog. I had some issues with my blog eating my Day in the Life post last year, though I did manage to recover it (actually, Shaina was able to recover it... thanks Shaina!). It's amazing to me to see how much has changed and how much stayed the same in the past year...
I work from home, but attend a fair number of off-site conferences and meetings each week, so I don't have a truly "typical" day. Since last year, I recorded a day of work from home, I opted for a day of go-go-go this time around: specifically March 22, 2016, a conference day!
5:10am: The alarm starts lighting up. Literally, because I recently decided that a) I wake up better when I do so gradually, and b) I can't sleep with my phone next to my bed (because I check it constantly), so I splurged on a light-and-sound alarm clock from The Sharper Image. Best investment I've ever made in my morning sanity.
5:30am: The alarm starts making noise (bird chirpings, to be precise). I, inevitably, hit snooze. I do not usually get up at this ungodly hour, but I'm part of the planning committee for today's conference events, which means I have to be there to help set up.
 |
| I forgot to take this before I left, so I snapped an outfit photo post-conference (hence the sun coming in through the windows instead of pitch blackness.) |
6:05am: I try to get the dog out of bed for a walk before I leave for the day, but he's having none of it. I can't say I blame him; warm cozy blankets and a dark room are awfully tempting. So I pour some of yesterday's coffee over ice (yep, I'm that person) and hit the road. (Don't worry, fellow dog-lovers: The Beard was home with him to ensure he was actually walked and fed in my absence.)
6:30am - 7:30am: Conference set up: filling in a few extra attendee folders, putting up signs, generally making sure everything is working (it wasn't).
7:30am - 8:30am: Registration and networking breakfast. I am so endlessly bad at small talk, but I put on a smiling face, get a second cup of coffee, and make it work. Collect a few business cards, see a few familiar folks, match some email acquaintances with faces.
8:30am - 3:00pm: Conference sessions. The topic of today's work is change management, all based around the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. We've got a great speaker lined up for the morning and the break-out sessions in the afternoon go off mostly without a hitch. We wrap up the day with ice cream from a local creamery. I am not mad.
3:00pm: The committee heaves a huge, collective sigh of relief that the day was, as best we can tell, a success. We take a group photo and start packing up what remains of the day. We're out of the conference center and on the road by 4:00, which puts me at home right at....
4:30pm: Home again, home again! I catch the dog snoozing on the sofa with not one but ALL of the throw pillows. I head up to my office to answer some urgent emails and confirm some of the week's remaining meetings.
 |
| My (messy) home office, which is where I spent most of my non-meeting and conference days. |
5:00pm: I am exhausted, so I sneak in a 20-minute nap. This is super, super unusual for me, but I've been burning the candle at all ends so decide I really need the recharge. Self care for the win!
6:00pm: Miraculously, I wake up and shake myself awake enough to catch my running club's training run at the local park. Still a little sleepy-headed, I decide to take it easy for the night's run.
6:10pm: I get through my first mile and I am on FIRE. I've rarely felt so good in an evening run, and I decide to pound out the tempo miles after all. It ended up being one of the best training runs of my year so far. If not ever.
 |
| I've never been fast, so anything sub-10:00 is an effort for me. Sub-9:00 is practically unheard of. |
7:00pm - 7:30pm: Stretching with the group back at our starting point, a bit of chit-chat and catch-up on weekend running plans, and then a cooldown walk home.
7:30pm - 8:00pm: Shower, change into sweats (I wore grown-up pants for nearly 12 hours today!), pick out my outfit for the next day (since I have another early-morning meeting the next day, though not nearly as early).
8:00pm - 9:00pm: Dinner (prep & eating). This is a bit later than we usually start dinner, though we do tend to eat fairly late. This week, we're trying our first meal subscription box. Not sure I'm the right audience in the long run (I don't mind grocery shopping so much...), but the meal's good! I accompany our lemon-chicken dish with a Citrus Saison Ale from Flying Dog to celebrate my awesome run. I'm still rocking a full-on runner's high as we sit down to eat.
 |
| Sideways dinners are the best kind, right? |
9:00pm: My mom calls right as we wrap up dinner, so I chat with her while we pick up in the kitchen. (We're trying this new adulting thing where we do the dishes after every meal instead of only when we run out of clean forks.) I even clean the stove.
9:30pm: I help The Beard with some school work (he's in a Masters program) by recording an interview with him.
10:00pm: Bed! Tonight I'm curling up with some Weirdathon books, but I often save my non-fiction reading for bedtime so it doesn't keep me up past my bedtime. I plug my phone in in the other room and curl up with the dog (who is not allowed in our bed, but sometimes I make exceptions...)
10:30pm: The Beard comes up for me to listen to the final interview project before he submits it, and it's excellent. Unfortunately, after downloading the attachment to listen to, I notice an email alert from our bank notifying us that our account is overdrawn, which leads to...
11:00pm: Realizing that our debit card info has been stolen, and someone's been withdrawing cash from ATMs from our account. This is not exactly calming bedtime news. The Beard calls the bank to cancel our cards, and I poke around in our account history to list out which charges are not ours until I find myself falling asleep with my phone in my hand. This is why I don't keep my phone by my bed, after all.
11:30pm: I think I finally turned the light out at about 11:30, though to be fair, I wasn't fully paying attention at this point. Sadly, the bank news disrupted my little bit of reading time for the day, so I didn't get nearly as much read as I'd hoped to.
---
What does a typical "Day in the Life" look like for you? Do you have a fairly regular routine, or an ever-changing schedule?
No comments
Thanks for stopping by!