To say i have small and niggly work related insomnia would be putting it mildly.
Juggling to the best of my ability, we managed to have a good day yesterday and get back into being a home ed family. Considering i’m not really well (did panic last night my tonsil was flaring up but it doesn’t seem any worse today) and have done nothing but sleep for long periods of the weekend, i was reasonbly back to normal for most of the day.
Josie and i played with magnetic numbers and learned their names and the order they go in. We may do that 400-500 more times. She also played on education city a lot and then on Bella Sara 🙄 a lot and then on Dora a lot, then played DS and then did something complicated with playmobil.
Amelie and i did violin together; she played her half and i played the teacher half on the recorder. Discovered i have no idea how to play high F#. Really wish flute and recorder didn’t have different F fingerings. However we had an awful lot of fun doing it together. She read P&J 3a to me effortlessly and amused me enormously by having a feminist rant about how Peter thinks Jane doesn’t know anything and what a know-it-all he is and why does he always get to do the most fun things anyway? Must find her some better books to read. She also did a load of EC, moved up a level in the science and sat with me and Maddy while we did some Galore Park History, recapped on dinosaurs and started on Charles Darwin and evolution.
Oh, Amelie also got asked to go for a try out for the development class at gym. Opinion is apparently divided. The people who train her think she is good enough, the person who runs the club thinks she needs more time to develop strength. I suspect that Amelie is a child who will rise to the challenge of being pushed.
Maddy also did the history and then did some pictures of the start of the world according to the Bible and Darwin, plus a very artistically erm.. influenced… version of a t-rex evolving. Not sure she grasps the difference between evolve and grow. Might look for some Creation Myths again today. She did guitar, EC, handwriting, ETC (“i might do 50 pages today”.. .she did 5!) and read 3 books, generally showing me what a focused small person she is.
Fran faffed at cello, having left her book at G&G’s, took a very long time to do 15 maths questions, a very long time to do some EC and then managed to evade answering questions about history, though she did enjoy us reading it together. She and i talked about school again – apparently now she just wants to go for a term, she thinks. Did tell her that she could do as she liked and that even if i thought she was mad, i respected her decision to be mad and that we loved her no matter what. Mentioned i would make her work for the rest of her life to pay off uniform if she only went for a week 😉 We did manage to get through half a GP maths chapter and pay attention to presenting the work in a way that would pass muster in school without tears. We even, Fran’s personal bugbear, managed to reread the chapter and refer back to find the rules that would help her do the sums. She is FRIGHTENINGLY like me, a total procrastinator with no attention span at all; i do wonder sometimes if the pair of us might benefit from Ritalin 🙄 However frustrating she is, i know Junior School would have been horribly confining for her but i do wonder what she is going to make of Senior School. I still have to stand over her to keep her concentrating and it is going to be a rude awakening not to have that. Heaven knows what will happen.
Still, she has her plus points. While i tried to talk to Maddy about the ‘start of the world’ i couldn’t help thinking that at 5yo Fran had a complete and highly imaginative idea of what i was saying and loved to discuss it. They are just all different. Did watch the last 20 minutes of Fran’s gym class tonight and resolved to nag her to do her tummy exercises and practise her walkovers this week. Do like being able to watch the class; it is always my one gripe with dancing.
We’ve done some minor bits of orgo planning, but so far all F, M and i have come up with is using our French stuff, creating a recipe book for each of them and doing a book challnge. Still, it’s a start.
****Random Work/Life Waffle****
I am, i think possibly, maybe, perhaps… a bit of a control freak. And i am NEVER in control, something i find extremely difficult to cope with. I created a business that is a bit of a monster and i’ve never got it running the way i really want to. There just aren’t enough of me to do all the things i want to do. So i lie awake at night because somewhere in the midst of being mum/worker/parent/owner/wife/everything else i’ve forgotten to send out a block of Fimo or refund someone £2. And however much it would be nice if people said “no problem, no hurry” no one does, because of course, why should they? The internet used to be a fuzzy friendly place of no expectations but now it is the default and everyone wants things yesterday – and i’ve not got enough braincells.
Instead of being proud that 600 people a day got their orders and 1 or 2 people a day needed something extra, i fret about it not being good enough. Instead of being pleased with what i’ve built, i’m currently feeling a bit morose about it, gently disentangling myself from it while needing to keep my fingers in the pies till Max can take it over properly (assuming that happens) and feeling an acutte sense of failure that it needs someone else to come in and turn it into what i haven’t quite managed to achieve. It doesn’t matter that mostly it works pretty much okay and that it is huge now considering that 3 part time people run it and it has no big debts or investments tied up in it, i just find myself frustrated that when it does get to being fab and perfect, it won’t be me that made that happen.
I really can’t explain this feeling; Max rolls his eyes at me. I suppose that i wish i could look at it and say “behold this small and perfectly formed business that is totally in my grasp” but instead i’m saying “here, make some sense out of this many headed Hydra before it crashes down around my ankles and bite me off at the toes.” You’d think it would be easy to keep a business small and within certain parameters, but i think that might take more skills, or a different innate mindset, to what i have. Max would do it brilliantly and we’ll be a good team, he does well what i don’t and i’m very pleased he wants to do it – but i must admit that the letting go is hard. I don’t mind *him* having it, i mind *anyone* having it. But i don’t actually want it either right now! I want it to be doing well, i don’t mind doing the hard work as a family, but i do mind that because i tend to see glasses half full, i’m seeing myself having to be rescued from it.
There are things afoot in general for us (and we should know next week what is happening) which could change things dramatically. As someone succinctly put it, it does feel events might be conspiring to make us take the leap of faith. Depending on the outcome we may have to come up with a Plan B and i don’t think that will be easy; i don’t know what it will mean. I badly, very very badly, need to take a break from it all so i guess it will come down to either giving up or getting in a full time person who can manage it for us. However big leaps of faith can be, i don’t think they stretch to not having enough in the bank to nearly support us for a year should the credit crunch bite harder than we’ve seen so far. So fingers crossed please.
But remember Merry, you had the vision in the first place, and got it up and running and that is no small achievement. It wouldn’t have got where it is today (a success) without your hard work.
Anyway, I know where you’re coming from with the control freakery thing. If I have one ball successfully in the air, I can’t help but bemoan the others lying on the ground.
Lets celebrate the good stuff!
I’ll slink back to my hole now, before you think that I am a total freak, and not just a control one!
I am rolling my eyes too. There are different business management types. You are an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs don’t run their businesses, they have people who do that for them. You are the Richard Brandon business personality type. He certainly doesn’t run his businesses.
So the personal angst about it bit can’t be resolved. Your worries relate to no one really devoted to running it at the moment. You have identified a person who can, Max, but to enable him to do so he needs to commit FT which means giving up that regular salary. I agree that is where worries are valid but he wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t see a better work/life balance and/or greater returns.
Hugs for the insomnia though xx.
Oh doncha just love being a people pleaser :o)
Would say more but without knowing the ins and outs will just add that you two are a team, and team Raymond is a good one ;o)
xc
I do like following Michelle in a comment thread, I so often get to say “what she said”.
Apart from Branson, surely?
I might feel better if it had been a vision, but really it was more a random application of enthusiasm without an actual plan! Which is how we’ve ended up HERE, which is good but also slightly bad at this moment. I’ve got a rather impressive mansion built on scaffolding. A pre-fab business now in for the long haul.
However, my intentions have always been honourable and i’m sure we can fix it. And i do know i am being more than slightly hard on myself but you can’t imagine the urge to just hurl it all temporarily on a shelf. It would be great if i could just turn off everything for a couple of weeks, but of course i just can’t now, the momentum, the fact i pay people and the bills mean that isn’t possible.
I’m with Jax- Michele seems to have summed up my thoughts. I’m amazed at what you have done so far-most of us can barely manage being just wife and mom sometimes without feeling overwhelmed.
Fingers crossed all goes well!
skipping back to the concentrating at school thing – I suspect, when everyone else in her class is sitting and doing whatever, she will just get on with it too. In some ways there are different distractions at home, iyswim.
grr at the brandon – but since i sent that from the mobile touch keyboard am impressed i didn’t make more typos!
The business is in a state of flux as it moves from start up small to a small-medium sized business. all perfectly normal and to be expected with a business that has grown organically and now needs to have systems in place. its all part of the challenge.
And therein lies satisfaction 😉
Yeah, apples, drinks… ds… apples, ds…apple..apples…
I can’t even manage my laundry pile, let alone juggle everything you do.
I’m told that two particularly large manufacturers of well known plastic toys that have been around for decades have systems that make you assume they don’t know they ostrich from their elbow, but they seem to be muddling along.
I can understand the difficulty in letting go of it though.
I completely understand the ‘want rid of it but can’t let it go’ quandry as I’m generally a mass of condtradictions about everything.
hope the sleep gets better 🙂
and glad it’s not just my eldest who’s obsessed with apples!
oops, forgot to add – everything crossed for you 🙂
Yeah, all that stuff that they said! I think I would feel just the same as you in your situation, but really I am just enormously impressed at what you have managed to do in your so-called ‘spare time’. I have a home-study course that’s been hanging around for about 4-5 years now and I haven’t managed to even start it, let alone anything else, and in that time you’ve built a massively successful business. You may find it hard to concentrate, but I wish I could do what you do!