My 40%

Part of my full time job

When someone asks what I do for work, I give a long winded answer about working part time as a pediatric endocrinologist but also having another part time job, too. I am pretty sure my current workload does amount to one full time job. Not a super intense one, but certainly ~40 hrs-worth on most weeks. I do struggle what to call my 40% job. Podcaster is incomplete. Content creator sounds kind of like an influencer, and I really don’t think I am in that group. Writer seems disingenuous, since I am not a published author (unless you count nearly 20 years of ‘published’ blog posts). Ahh well. I guess I don’t need a label!

I had a mostly full day of work today, with a short ‘second shift’ that began ~1 hr ago with the much-procrastinated task of paying quarterly taxes. The above is time block style planning — I stuck to the schedule for the most part but my BLP recording took a little longer than I anticipated. Even though I don’t do the audio editing, there is a whole post-recording process that I sometimes pretend doesn’t exist. And it does. But 3 episodes are now submitted, BLPA was awesome (so much energy this round!), and taxes are filed so I feel pretty good about the day!

(I also finished my workout which was blissful thanks to unseasonably cool temps + did manage to check off the D in Duolingo which I did at very low volume but still wondered if the woman sitting behind me could hear; she was speaking fluent Spanish into her phone so was probably amused at hearing my low level exercises.. Ha.)

I am now waiting for gymnastics to finish and wondering if my laptop has enough battery life to finish this post! But I feel good about how I am currently managing my less structured days.

When I first started my official 60/40 split I really struggled with this, but things have started to feel more routine. When I started, I thought I’d feel like I wasn’t even working because it’s fun work, but truthfully I *do* feel like I’m working on these days. “Not working” would look quite different. I DO enjoy it, however!

AND, this is a reminder to myself to keep things manageable. I get so excited about various ideas but I do want to ensure that I preserve some flexibility. I like to be able to easily fit in kid-related appointments and do things like get my hair done (always a long process!) on weekdays. I am going on G’s field trip Thursday, something that would have been really difficult before! At first I started to stress out about reduced time to work, but honestly — going on the occasional field trip is something I want to do. Get to do. Will report back from the pumpkin patch . . .