Syllabus Creation Week -- Crossover Post B

Today, I'm doing something I haven't done in a while -- a crossover post. And I thought it would be fun to do it with a twist.

Each week, I post blogs on three different sites -- CatholicMom.com and my two sites -- here and The Porch Swing Chronicles. While my focus here is organizing, time management and related topics, my focus over on the Porch Swing is writing, family, teaching and related topics.

Despite having two blog sites, I have one life and the same life events and occurrences spark different post ideas. Some are right for this blog, others for The Porch Swing Chronicles.

So, today, I thought it would be fun to take the same first sentence and use it to write a post for each site. There are a few other sentences in common, too, but the end result will be two different posts. 

I hope you enjoy my experiment. Feel free to click over to The Porch Swing Chronicles to see another side of the same story.

This week, I am writing syllabi Although it seems like a last-minute thing (classes start next week), it's actually the culmination of the brainstorming I've been doing this summer -- new ideas, revised assignments...

...and a dash of procrastination.

For a while, I was doing a great job, making progress by chunking my time and dedicating blocks of time to both class prep and writing projects. I thought I'd cleared the procrastination hurdle by chipping away at things slowly but, this week, back-to-school prep has collided with my daughter's last week home for the summer. Progress has slowed to something between a crawl and a herky-jerky dance as productivity gives way to adventures with my daughter -- a week of shopping and appointments and whatever else materializes.

This is an intentional choice -- the time with my daughter, not the lack of progress -- and one that's definitely good for my heart, if not my productivity. By this time next week, she'll be back at school and, while I'm happy she'll be five hours away instead of an ocean away, the quiet house and empty calendar pages will be bittersweet, so I'm storing up mother-daughter time like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter.

Time management is not the only thing that has taken a hit. The acquisitions for her larger-than-usual dorm space and the things she needs to pack, combined with the time crunch that's an unavoidable side effect of the back-to-school busyness, have yielded piles in places I've done a reasonably good job of keeping clear all summer long.

This does not provide a sense of peace to counteract my sense of being overwhelmed (said the woman typing her Wednesday blog post at 10:44 p.m.)

But this is life. My characters aren't going anywhere. I've made enough progress on class prep that I can realign some goals if necessary in order to free up time to spend with one of the people whose company I enjoy more than anything (even chocolate). Best of all, most of the time, I can even be unflappable mom instead of frazzled mom.

Most of the time.

No matter how organized we are or how well we manage our time, life will always intervene. Changes in routine, schedule and life itself will cast our best-laid plans aside with the ferocity of a toddler whose toy no longer pleases him. My mind has grasped the concept that my organizational and time management skills will ebb and flow with the vicissitudes of life, and that I need to be flexible. And, if my heart is slow to catch up, it's at least smart enough to know what my priorities are.

So adventuring I will go.