I got good at mornings by week three. I was also getting up forty-five minutes earlier than I had in my previous life.
My work starts at eight-thirty, remote, which sounds flexible until you’re also responsible for having two children at a bus stop at eight-fifteen. It’s actually approximately zero minutes of flexibility. I started front-loading my work into evenings, which meant I was doing payroll reconciliation after nine p.m. three or four nights a week, which is not ideal for either the reconciliation or the sleep.
My supervisor, Dan, noticed the quality dip around week three. I told him I had a family situation. He said okay and gave me the kind of look that meant he was noting it. I’d been at the company for four years and had a solid record, so the look didn’t turn into anything, but I was aware of it.
I added “work quality risk” to the note I’d been keeping.
## Extension Two: The Conversation I Had With Myself
By the end of January, Max and Ella had been with me for three weeks. Owen had a new place — he’d moved in the previous Thursday — but the kids were still with me, and the reason kept evolving.
The first version was that he needed a few days to get the apartment set up before the kids came, which was reasonable. The second version, which emerged during a phone call on a Saturday, was that his work schedule was going through a rough patch — warehouse supervising apparently has its own quarterly pressures — and could I hold on just a little longer while he sorted out childcare coverage for the mornings.