Tag: #NYCSchools

  • New Writing Schedule for Fall

    The wife and I sat down and had the discussion about whether we were going to send our daughter to school this Fall. We know that the kid really, desperately, wants to be back in a classroom with her friends and her teacher. We also know that we just aren’t comfortable with the way the world is when it comes to Covid. I also understand that NYC is one of the safer places in America to be when it comes to infection rates, and that precautions are being taken with the interest of safety for students and teachers in mind.

    But, we still aren’t comfortable. And I can admit that this is based off a feeling, and not logic. My feeling is that I don’t want to put my kid at risk. Covid is too dangerous without a vaccine.

    So, we have had to also sit and rethink how we are going to handle the wife working full time from home, a full-time student at home, and this guy looking to steal moments to write. I was hoping that I would have about three hours on days when the kid was in school, but that doesn’t seem likely for the rest of this year.

    I’m not complaining. First, I don’t think I have the focus right now to sit and write for three hours straight. But, most importantly, my number one job is to take care of the kid; making sure she is safe, and gets the best education possible. It’s a small sacrifice to make on my part, and the reward of having this time with the kid is boundless.

  • Scheduling Writing Time in a Pandemic

    There might be a lot to unpack in this statement, but I have the feeling that kids will not physically go to school in New York for the first few months of the school year. My guess is that there will at least be two months of remote learning, and that’s if a safe and effective vaccine can be developed. (But this is a topic for another blog.) With that said, I don’t think I will have a few hours to write every day, as I will need to be the kid’s teacher for the foreseeable future.

    So, I need to look for the time in our schedule to make writing happen.

    Right now, I’m getting about two hours in on a perfect, everything breaks my way, kind of day. I can get about 30 to 45 minutes to journal in the morning, when me and the kid have some park time. The kid used to take a daily nap, but that has morphed into “Quiet Playtime” in the kid’s room, and depending on how much I have to clean the kitchen up after lunch, I can fit 30 minutes of blog time. Finally, the kid has an hour of free tv time, which I sit with her and monitor, and that is when I can fit in an hour to work on other things. I used to try and write in the evening, but that’s the only time me and the wife get to have some time together, and that’s pretty important to us. Since rarely does anything break my way, I’m lucky if I can get about 45 minutes to an hour day.

    What complicates this even more is that my wife is working from home, so the family desk is now her’s, and I haven’t found a good landing place to work in the apartment.

    So, as I look to the next month and Fall in general, I am trying to figure out what our schedule will be so everyone can get what they need, and I can still fit in a little more than 2 hours a day to write.