Keeping busy

Since having a child, four and a half years ago now, I seem to have developed a fear of not being busy, and not having things in the diary. This has improved recently as Isabel's more able to entertain herself, and indeed often prefers playing her own games to doing things with me! I feel it's important to try to engage with her properly every day, either through sitting and reading stories or painting (which we did today, with the table covered by an old shower curtain!).

This means that "me time", which I used to relish, now feels like wasting time which I should be spending tidying/cleaning the house, or working, or doing something with Isabel, or just spending some quality time with the old husbandio, who often gets shoved to the back of the queue by these other demands. (Apologies, husbandio....). This means that I'm often behind on watching the programmes I like (ones which we don't watch together anyway, which include Casualty, Holby City, and ER - I'm a sucker for a medical drama). So then I end up weeks behind, and my mum gets cross with me because she can't discuss them with me without revealing what's happened - adding even more pressure, which I just don't need.

I'm not sure why I'm writing about this except I think it's going to get worse over the next few weeks and months - at the moment because I'm working mornings so am also having to do some stuff in the evenings since that's the only time I can talk to my US colleagues. But I expect that the only thing to give will be my sanity, so it's unlikely that anyone will notice any changes!