Summer Hours....Lost in Transition
Summer Hours....Lost in Transition
Starting April 15th and for several days to follow, I go on a rampage of shopping and spa treatments. I remind myself to rest and relax because my body will soon crash. Because it finally could! Resetting my body clock is the key, the process varying as to days or weeks each year. And when it’s time to go back to work again after my celebration and hurrah, I settle into a new routine, working three days a week at most and shortened days at that.
For essentially the entire month of May, work takes a backseat to fun. I do easy things, things I can finish. I reorganize the piles of work that I have to finish by the extension deadlines of September 15th and October 15th, plenty of time for everything to be completed. By June 1st, I face the reality that I am not getting very much done in the five or six hours that I am in the office and extend the hours on the days that I am present. Generally those days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving me a four day weekend to have a life and pursue my other creative endeavors.
Of course, the beauty of this flexible schedule is that should an opportunity come up, I can of course swap a day in the office for a day of fun. And when it came closer to the fall deadlines, if I need to add an extra work day, I simply do. I know my responsibilities and obligations and never once in 24 years have I not met them. My clients may be procrastinators and delinquent in their obligations, but not me.
The first couple of years of this regime, I was kind of rigid with myself in adhering to the schedule. In those years, I could not tolerate being in the office on Thursday or Friday. I was in one of my “hating the business” phases and did not want to spend any more time there than was actually required. The less time that I was there, the better my psych was. My four day weekend was a sacrament not to be disturbed. But as things adjusted themselves as they tend to do, I found that if I had to be in the office on a Thursday or Friday, no trauma befell me. I was a big girl. I knew it was all in my head. I simply needed to adjust my head, which of course I did with a little time and distance.
So this year, after having the best tax season that I can recall in all my years in business (24 and counting) (Lessons of the Season – The Mind and Body Connection ) I have no worries as I head into what I fondly call, the rest of my year. I get to add an extra milestone date to my year. To me, April 15th is a holiday just like New Years Day or my birthday. I get to start my life over in many ways after I’ve survived my busiest work time. It always feels so freeing to me.
The first weeks of freedom I work as little as I expect to, two days a week if that. I see no real need to head out of town or take an entire week off. As long as I find the time to re-energize myself, long weekends are more than adequate for me. At the end of April, I volunteer for a youth entrepreneur conference. I work my tail off behind the scenes, more work and longer hours than I would ever have put in had I gone to the office. Seeing some of the kids from the previous year’s conference who fondly and excitedly remembered me is a reward unto itself. Not to mention the progress made in their business plan competitions and exhibit booths. The conference concludes, I crash at home the next day paralyzed with the nothingness of it all. Ah, tomorrow I’ll get back into the routine.
And yet, something doesn’t feel quite right in the weeks to follow. I feel behind from the get-go, never feeling like I have achieved enough at the end of the short work week. Granted, it takes a while to remember that what I get done in a five or six hour day is not going to be equivalent to what I get done in a twelve hour day. It’s only logical, yet logic has nothing to do with my feelings. I check my weekly hours and compare them to the prior year. Yes, I am very detailed oriented and keep those kind of records! Not only am I right on track, but on a cumulative basis I’ve actually worked more hours to date than the year. Yet this feeling of being behind is simply not going away.
And then I realize what the real problem is. My dad is dying. And a part of me is unsure if at a moment’s notice I’ll have to head to Florida. I had just returned from a mid-May trip to visit my parents. The deterioration in my dad’s condition is clearly apparent, the chemotherapy simply too much for his withered body to take. My larger than life father has become a crumbled sick old man. And while I knew in my heart that he would probably not live until the end of the year, even I, the realist of the family could not envision that he’d be gone four weeks later. And so, I find myself working on my sacred Thursdays just to try to stay ahead of things.
Pneumonia takes hold and dad teeters between life and death for over a week in early June. In the middle of working on a client’s quarterly estimated payment analysis I simply stop. I find myself composing an email to all my clients whose work I had anticipated completing already or in the weeks to come asking for their patience. It just felt right to be honest at that very moment as to what was happening in my life. My clients responses are just what one would have hoped them to, full of compassion and understanding.
Many of these people have been clients for more years than I can remember, some from the start of my practice. After being such an intimate part of my client’s financial lives for so many years, in some ways I’ve become part of the family. My clients and I have grown up together living through job changes, business beginnings and endings, marriages, divorces, births and deaths. Relationships that were once just business are now tinged with a personal friendship. I was able to make a conscious choice not to grow my business seven years ago because I have an amazingly loyal base of clients that I thoroughly enjoy doing business with. I know that helps me survive the times when I’d rather be doing something else to make a living! The moment I sent the email, relief washed over me. I could continue to work, but not feel guilty about not quite being up to speed. My concentration was not at a high point. And I pride myself on doing quality work. Quality means knowing when you are not your best and saving it for another day.
And as it turns out, my anticipation in asking for patience was well founded. Five days later I was on a plane to Florida, my father dying minutes before we arrived at his hospital bed. The week that followed was a whirlwind of events in three different states. All my deadline compliance for the month had already been completed before I left the office the week before. While there were work to do, nothing was urgent – nothing. If there was a week to be out of the office, amazingly this was the week. I checked email only to the extent that it related the “Pappa Bob dies in Peace” email that I had sent to selected clients and friends.
For a week I was surrounded by loving family and friends. I am at peace with my dad’s death, his suffering now over. Tears came at odd times – four a.m. when the knot on my right shoulder keeps me awake, as I read a poem he gave my mother for their 50th wedding anniversary at his funeral, the moment the massage therapist touches my feet the day after when I can collapse into the exhaustion.
The family events conclude on Sunday evening. But it was clear, even the day before that my good intentions to go back to work on Monday were out the window. I was too tired to even drive back to the city from my sister’s Sunday night. My Monday afternoon was spent in the garden. Touching earth and planting flowers somehow felt right to me. Tuesday is soon enough to head back into the office.
The hoopla over, now the reality settles in. It all seems so surreal to all of us. For me, going back to work occupies my mind elsewhere. As the “financial child” I know the work that lies ahead of me in getting my parents’ numbers house in order. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it. My dad was organized and despite his illness kept his mind active even updating computer schedules (albeit on archaic software that I would never think to put on my computer) through the end of April, six weeks before his death. Consolidating all his investments however is not something that he had quite conquered.
From the minute that I walk into the office that first Tuesday morning, I know the given these extra obligations and responsibilities, the usual freedom of my summer hours are a thing of the past. I’m not sure that I want to take my Thursdays and Fridays at home to do financial work for my family. That work for me is best done at the office, leaving my home a more sacred creative space.
Day to day, I don’t know how I’ll feel. Two weeks later and I’m still exhausted. Always a morning worker, somehow now my mornings are filled with administrative tasks instead, my concentration not quite ready until later in the day. I can’t get moving in the morning. I’m not myself. And I though I know that’s to be expected, it still takes me by surprise. This is my grief. It’s not through tears, although those will come at unexpected moments. The morning after my birthday in early July, being one such moment, with more I’m sure to follow. My grief is a heavy weight on my shoulders, literally. In fact, it dawns on me as I first wrote this that the last few days have finally been pain-free.
I was so distraught on post birthday morning that I just took the morning off, going for a walk to clear my head, stopping in a store en route just in time for the 40% mark-downs. Nothing like a sale to change my mood! I got to work at 2 PM, a time when I’d normally be thinking about how soon I could leave, and worked until 7 PM. No phones, no interruptions, just a quiet hum of the television in the background. This schedule is so not me. But this year, I think maybe it is.
This summer, my hours might just be some part of every day: Monday – Friday. My clients think I’ll be there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe I’ll only answer the phone on those work days. Or maybe not! If I can’t handle my emotions, then I’m going to give myself a break. I’m not going to guilt myself because I’m not in the office. I have always fulfilled my work obligations. I’m not about to fall down on the job now. I’m just going to figure out how to balance this all differently this year. It’s all new territory for me and I have to allow myself to learn as I go, consciously.
To think that I actually figured this out before I let it get too out of hand, before I turned my work space at home into “daddy estate financial space” takes me by happy surprise. So conscious of my need to balance my life, I know in advance that I am out of going to be out of balance. To actually anticipate the event before I allow it to happen, well chalk one up for me.
By next summer by guess is that this will be as they once were. Summer hours will be back as they should be, as I like them. But this year, life’s circumstances are what they are. And so I will adapt accordingly, going with the flow, making the necessary changes that I need to as I need to, always keeping my goal to live a balance life in mind. Yeah for me! Yeah for everyone who’s a part of my life too. To anticipate the stress in advance can only be a good thing. And while I am more tired this summer than I can remember, partly from going into the office every day and partly from the events of my life, I know that this too shall pass. This is a cycle of balance that is a cycle of life. And I’m proud of myself for being able to consciously see beyond the grief early on. It will keep me on a even keel while I try my best to get through it.
Summer HoursLost in Transition - To learn more about this author, visit Debbie Lessin's Website.
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By now I’d have been in the full throttle of my post tax season hours. Since 2000 when I downsized my business for the third time and went back to essentially being a solo act, my goal was to work extremely hard during my “busy season” which was directly linked to my March 15th and April 15th deadlines. I’d work long hours, my internal body clock often going off in the middle of the night, no alarm needed, raring to go. Twelve hours plus days were the norm. An early departure on Friday evening and an 8:00PM massage were scheduled every other Wednesday night. I worked Saturdays for the eight weeks starting February 15th, productive quiet days only intended to wrap up the weeks work. My brain would begin anew on Monday morning. At days end on Saturday in recent years I’d find my way to the acupuncturist, a treat to myself to be sure. If any work was done on Sundays it was administrative. Things I could do at home in my pajamas, paying bills, invoicing, things that simply did not tax my brain (all pun intended!) or require too much thinking.
Starting April 15th and for several days to follow, I go on a rampage of shopping and spa treatments. I remind myself to rest and relax because my body will soon crash. Because it finally could! Resetting my body clock is the key, the process varying as to days or weeks each year. And when it’s time to go back to work again after my celebration and hurrah, I settle into a new routine, working three days a week at most and shortened days at that.
For essentially the entire month of May, work takes a backseat to fun. I do easy things, things I can finish. I reorganize the piles of work that I have to finish by the extension deadlines of September 15th and October 15th, plenty of time for everything to be completed. By June 1st, I face the reality that I am not getting very much done in the five or six hours that I am in the office and extend the hours on the days that I am present. Generally those days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving me a four day weekend to have a life and pursue my other creative endeavors.
Of course, the beauty of this flexible schedule is that should an opportunity come up, I can of course swap a day in the office for a day of fun. And when it came closer to the fall deadlines, if I need to add an extra work day, I simply do. I know my responsibilities and obligations and never once in 24 years have I not met them. My clients may be procrastinators and delinquent in their obligations, but not me.
The first couple of years of this regime, I was kind of rigid with myself in adhering to the schedule. In those years, I could not tolerate being in the office on Thursday or Friday. I was in one of my “hating the business” phases and did not want to spend any more time there than was actually required. The less time that I was there, the better my psych was. My four day weekend was a sacrament not to be disturbed. But as things adjusted themselves as they tend to do, I found that if I had to be in the office on a Thursday or Friday, no trauma befell me. I was a big girl. I knew it was all in my head. I simply needed to adjust my head, which of course I did with a little time and distance.
So this year, after having the best tax season that I can recall in all my years in business (24 and counting) (Lessons of the Season – The Mind and Body Connection ) I have no worries as I head into what I fondly call, the rest of my year. I get to add an extra milestone date to my year. To me, April 15th is a holiday just like New Years Day or my birthday. I get to start my life over in many ways after I’ve survived my busiest work time. It always feels so freeing to me.
The first weeks of freedom I work as little as I expect to, two days a week if that. I see no real need to head out of town or take an entire week off. As long as I find the time to re-energize myself, long weekends are more than adequate for me. At the end of April, I volunteer for a youth entrepreneur conference. I work my tail off behind the scenes, more work and longer hours than I would ever have put in had I gone to the office. Seeing some of the kids from the previous year’s conference who fondly and excitedly remembered me is a reward unto itself. Not to mention the progress made in their business plan competitions and exhibit booths. The conference concludes, I crash at home the next day paralyzed with the nothingness of it all. Ah, tomorrow I’ll get back into the routine.
And yet, something doesn’t feel quite right in the weeks to follow. I feel behind from the get-go, never feeling like I have achieved enough at the end of the short work week. Granted, it takes a while to remember that what I get done in a five or six hour day is not going to be equivalent to what I get done in a twelve hour day. It’s only logical, yet logic has nothing to do with my feelings. I check my weekly hours and compare them to the prior year. Yes, I am very detailed oriented and keep those kind of records! Not only am I right on track, but on a cumulative basis I’ve actually worked more hours to date than the year. Yet this feeling of being behind is simply not going away.
And then I realize what the real problem is. My dad is dying. And a part of me is unsure if at a moment’s notice I’ll have to head to Florida. I had just returned from a mid-May trip to visit my parents. The deterioration in my dad’s condition is clearly apparent, the chemotherapy simply too much for his withered body to take. My larger than life father has become a crumbled sick old man. And while I knew in my heart that he would probably not live until the end of the year, even I, the realist of the family could not envision that he’d be gone four weeks later. And so, I find myself working on my sacred Thursdays just to try to stay ahead of things.
Pneumonia takes hold and dad teeters between life and death for over a week in early June. In the middle of working on a client’s quarterly estimated payment analysis I simply stop. I find myself composing an email to all my clients whose work I had anticipated completing already or in the weeks to come asking for their patience. It just felt right to be honest at that very moment as to what was happening in my life. My clients responses are just what one would have hoped them to, full of compassion and understanding.
Many of these people have been clients for more years than I can remember, some from the start of my practice. After being such an intimate part of my client’s financial lives for so many years, in some ways I’ve become part of the family. My clients and I have grown up together living through job changes, business beginnings and endings, marriages, divorces, births and deaths. Relationships that were once just business are now tinged with a personal friendship. I was able to make a conscious choice not to grow my business seven years ago because I have an amazingly loyal base of clients that I thoroughly enjoy doing business with. I know that helps me survive the times when I’d rather be doing something else to make a living! The moment I sent the email, relief washed over me. I could continue to work, but not feel guilty about not quite being up to speed. My concentration was not at a high point. And I pride myself on doing quality work. Quality means knowing when you are not your best and saving it for another day.
And as it turns out, my anticipation in asking for patience was well founded. Five days later I was on a plane to Florida, my father dying minutes before we arrived at his hospital bed. The week that followed was a whirlwind of events in three different states. All my deadline compliance for the month had already been completed before I left the office the week before. While there were work to do, nothing was urgent – nothing. If there was a week to be out of the office, amazingly this was the week. I checked email only to the extent that it related the “Pappa Bob dies in Peace” email that I had sent to selected clients and friends.
For a week I was surrounded by loving family and friends. I am at peace with my dad’s death, his suffering now over. Tears came at odd times – four a.m. when the knot on my right shoulder keeps me awake, as I read a poem he gave my mother for their 50th wedding anniversary at his funeral, the moment the massage therapist touches my feet the day after when I can collapse into the exhaustion.
The family events conclude on Sunday evening. But it was clear, even the day before that my good intentions to go back to work on Monday were out the window. I was too tired to even drive back to the city from my sister’s Sunday night. My Monday afternoon was spent in the garden. Touching earth and planting flowers somehow felt right to me. Tuesday is soon enough to head back into the office.
The hoopla over, now the reality settles in. It all seems so surreal to all of us. For me, going back to work occupies my mind elsewhere. As the “financial child” I know the work that lies ahead of me in getting my parents’ numbers house in order. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it. My dad was organized and despite his illness kept his mind active even updating computer schedules (albeit on archaic software that I would never think to put on my computer) through the end of April, six weeks before his death. Consolidating all his investments however is not something that he had quite conquered.
From the minute that I walk into the office that first Tuesday morning, I know the given these extra obligations and responsibilities, the usual freedom of my summer hours are a thing of the past. I’m not sure that I want to take my Thursdays and Fridays at home to do financial work for my family. That work for me is best done at the office, leaving my home a more sacred creative space.
Day to day, I don’t know how I’ll feel. Two weeks later and I’m still exhausted. Always a morning worker, somehow now my mornings are filled with administrative tasks instead, my concentration not quite ready until later in the day. I can’t get moving in the morning. I’m not myself. And I though I know that’s to be expected, it still takes me by surprise. This is my grief. It’s not through tears, although those will come at unexpected moments. The morning after my birthday in early July, being one such moment, with more I’m sure to follow. My grief is a heavy weight on my shoulders, literally. In fact, it dawns on me as I first wrote this that the last few days have finally been pain-free.
I was so distraught on post birthday morning that I just took the morning off, going for a walk to clear my head, stopping in a store en route just in time for the 40% mark-downs. Nothing like a sale to change my mood! I got to work at 2 PM, a time when I’d normally be thinking about how soon I could leave, and worked until 7 PM. No phones, no interruptions, just a quiet hum of the television in the background. This schedule is so not me. But this year, I think maybe it is.
This summer, my hours might just be some part of every day: Monday – Friday. My clients think I’ll be there on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe I’ll only answer the phone on those work days. Or maybe not! If I can’t handle my emotions, then I’m going to give myself a break. I’m not going to guilt myself because I’m not in the office. I have always fulfilled my work obligations. I’m not about to fall down on the job now. I’m just going to figure out how to balance this all differently this year. It’s all new territory for me and I have to allow myself to learn as I go, consciously.
To think that I actually figured this out before I let it get too out of hand, before I turned my work space at home into “daddy estate financial space” takes me by happy surprise. So conscious of my need to balance my life, I know in advance that I am out of going to be out of balance. To actually anticipate the event before I allow it to happen, well chalk one up for me.
By next summer by guess is that this will be as they once were. Summer hours will be back as they should be, as I like them. But this year, life’s circumstances are what they are. And so I will adapt accordingly, going with the flow, making the necessary changes that I need to as I need to, always keeping my goal to live a balance life in mind. Yeah for me! Yeah for everyone who’s a part of my life too. To anticipate the stress in advance can only be a good thing. And while I am more tired this summer than I can remember, partly from going into the office every day and partly from the events of my life, I know that this too shall pass. This is a cycle of balance that is a cycle of life. And I’m proud of myself for being able to consciously see beyond the grief early on. It will keep me on a even keel while I try my best to get through it.
Summer HoursLost in Transition - To learn more about this author, visit Debbie Lessin's Website.
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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