It's Saturday night.
I spent the morning trying to learn Texas Real Property, which, to paraphrase my Evidence professor, is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Then I take the kids to the Y with the wife after the Apple takes a nap. We get done there, buy some dinner (Chinese at Empress Chinese on Long Point - try it, good stuff, good price), get home and eat with the family, all the while trying to not yell at my children because - and follow me closely here - they were acting like children.
After dinner, I had parenting I could have done. I had laundry I could have done. I had dishes I could have done. Most importantly, I had studying I SHOULD have done. Did I do any of that? No. I went to my room, turned on Scrubs, and proceeded to watch the rest of Season 3 on DVD. The whole time I was watching it, I knew I should be getting up, but I couldn't.
I froze.
I didn't leave the room until about 20 minutes ago to see if the Tooth Fairy had left a Susan B. Anthony dollar for the Princess, who lost her first tooth today, and to get myself some water.
I'm rather upset with myself right now. I can justify absentee parenting when I'm studying, and I can justify not studying when I'm parenting. But I did neither. I sat in a bed, in a room, while my wife took care of everything else. She doesn't deserve that. I need to make use of the time she's giving me to study, so that I can get my 675. Scrubs won't help that.
The funny thing is, I couldn't even really enjoy the show, because I knew I was wasting time, and that was 4 hours of studying I'm not going to get back. I promised myself yesterday I was going to take it light today, but I should have done more than just 4 hours of Real Property essays.
But, it's too late to undo that now. Tomorrow, back to the grind; estates and guardianships, Con Law, and Crim Pro, and Texas Civil Procedure. Wish us luck.
2 comments:
Cut yourself some slack. If you don't have some of that down time you're doing more harm than good to your overall effort. It was time you obviously needed to decompress and there is nothing wrong with that.
What jae said.
And sometimes you have to finish up the season of whatever show it is you're watching in order to move on. At least Scrubs episodes w/o commercials are only about 20 minutes long. I wasted quite a bit of potential study time on Heroes, which is an hour-long show (about 45 with the abbreviated commercials on nbc.com). I also watched the entire first season of the Office on DVD, in one sitting, naturally. Fortunately it was a short season! Netflix is on hold for the next 2 weeks.
And spending 4 hours to yourself doesn't make you a bad father/husband/student. Your family knows this is temporary. I bet they understand more than you know. They obviously understood that you needed that time, or they probably would have bugged you during it. You're fine. Don't stress.
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