Passions

Sometimes it's hard to keep all the balls in the air at the same time.
If I decide to focus on writing, my running slips. If I decide to really train for running, my writing falls off a cliff. I won't even tell you where mothering and teaching fit in.
One of the problems is that I am most productive early in the morning. At 5 or 6 a.m. I am usually either at the computer writing or on the road running. And that is my window of opportunity.
If I write for an hour or two, I'm not likely to then go for a run. I might head out the door, but I don't make it too far.
If I go for a nice run, when I return dripping sweat, I'm more likely to sit on the front porch and read the newspaper than I am to sit at the computer and write.
Many days these past few weeks, my early morning hours have been spent preparing for class or grading papers. I'm teaching four online classes this summer, but once everyone is out of bed, if Mom is home, the expectations are that I'm not really working. I can make lunches and run to Target, and all those other little errands that eat into my day instead of grading and preparing for the classes I do have to go to teach.
Grace and I have also been following an exercise program that takes an hour to an hour and a half everyday with only one day of rest each week. We've finished five weeks of it so far. Grace is not an early riser, although I may roust her out of bed at 8 on mornings when she has to work. So this is another thing that is eating up my time.
There's always the evening, someone might suggest. But they haven't seen me in the evenings. I'm wiped out. Whether I've been teaching, grading papers, running kids to doctors appointments or meeting friends for lunch, come 8 p.m., I'm useless and am lucky to hold a book in front of my face or lift up the remote to change the channel until I lurch to bed at 10.
I guess I'm kind of the opposite of ADD, people who can't pay attention to one thing. Instead, I end up focusing on one passion at a time and the others fall to the wayside.