In the last few years of blogging, I’ve read a few of these types of posts with great interest. After following and reading a blogger for a while, I feel invested and naturally I’m a bit curious about them as a person, and just as a blogger. I’ve wanted to do “A Day in the Life” post for a while, so I guess today is as good as any day.
It’s going to be more like a description of a week because every day is different terms of schedule and what I do, but there’s a certain pattern that’s pretty stable. Also this is what my work schedule is like from September to late December. It varies with the time of year; summer is far more relaxed and I work fewer hours, so don’t think my work schedule is like this all year round.
Mondays & Wednesdays
My alarm goes off at 6 am, but I probably roll out of bed at 6:15. I’m not a morning person. It takes a lot of effort for me to get out of bed. Ben makes coffee for me every morning. We spend the next half hour drinking coffee, reading the paper, and making small chitchat while Bandit is snuggled with me under a blanket. This is my favorite part of the day. At 7, I get dressed and leave the house by 7:15 am.
Depending on traffic, it takes me 75 or 90 mins to get to work. Before I get to work, however, I almost always go to the small shopping center that’s right by work. Sometimes I do some light grocery shopping because that particular Whole Foods usually has some great deal on fruit, so I load up. Sometimes I run an errand at Target or at the post office. Sometimes I stop to buy another cup of coffee because I know it’s going to be a long day at work.
I get into my office by 9 am. I don’t talk about work here on the blog because I keep separate spheres in my life. It’s less about having privacy from readers, but more about I need to enforce privacy on my personal life from work.
I spend the first 30 minutes reading and answering overnight emails, and getting organized for the rest of the day. Come 9:30, and it’s crazy busy at work. When we first started dating, Ben wanted to show that he was sweet and considerate, so he’d call me during work just to say that he was thinking of me. He quickly figured out that I had no time for phone calls and unless it was an emergency, he shouldn’t call at all. I take lunch around 1, but depending on how things are, sometimes lunch is around 2 pm. At 5:30 things are officially done for the day. I spend another hour to hour and half finishing up and eating dinner while working. When work gets really busy, then I’ll stay even later. It’s not uncommon for me to finish at 10 pm. I usually try to leave by 8 pm. If I’m done before 8 pm, I’ll either go home earlier or I stay at work a little later to take care of personal stuff (pay bills, do online shopping, blog) because I like doing those things on a desktop better than on my own personal laptop. I would say most of the time I leave work at 8 pm, but starting around late Oct til Dec, I’ll be working past 8 pm.
The evening commute usually takes an hour, but if there’s a car accident (once a week?) then it’ll take longer. So I’m home between 9 and 9:30 pm. If I’m still hungry, I’ll have something small to eat. When I’m home, this is when Ben and I catch up with each other’s day. We try to go to bed by 11 pm each night (don’t always succeed).
Tuesdays
I sleep in til 7 am. Sometimes I’m really tired and I sleep until 8 am. Again, Ben makes me coffee and we do our morning ritual of drinking coffee and reading the paper. Then I go run. Tuesdays mean speed work. For speed work, I go to the gym, track, or Prospect Park, depending on the weather, the type of speed work, and what I feel like. I come back home, shower, and then go to work. On Tuesdays, I show up to work at about noon.
Tuesdays are busy, but not as crazy and busy as Mondays & Wednesdays. I almost always leave by 7 pm or earlier. Sometimes Ben and I get to have dinner together on Tuesdays, if I come home on the earlier side and he didn’t eat earlier. Because my schedule can be erratic, we don’t schedule eating dinner together from Mondays-Wednesdays. We’re both on our own.
On quiet days when I get to leave by 5 pm, I’ll go Korean grocery shopping. There are certain ingredients that I need for cooking that I can only get from a Korean market and often the fruit and vegetables are cheaper there too.
Thursdays
I almost always sleep in on Thursdays because I’m so tired. When I get up, we have our morning coffee ritual and then I go run. Thursday is tempo day. I’ll either run at the gym or at the park. Ben occasionally joins me, but these days we’ve been going to the park together, but we’ll do our own separate workouts.
I work from home on Thursdays, so it’s a much quieter and relaxed day. I’ll do laundry or run other errands that I need to get done. I probably work about 6 hours on Thursdays.
Fridays
Fridays are busy days, but usually because I’m in meetings. I try to leave by 7 am because I can’t be late for meetings. I leave early just in case there’s a horrible car accident that snarls up traffic. I’m usually done by noon and then I head out. I try to work a short day on Fridays, but this is dependent upon what’s going on at work. For example, this past Friday, I worked until almost 8 pm.
Saturdays & Sundays
There’s no such thing as a typical weekend because we usually have something going on: long runs, races, travel, errands, whatever. I always feel like we have packed weekends full of things to do. If we’re home for the weekend, we like to go out for brunch after a long run or a local race. On Sundays I try to cook a very large meal for Sunday dinner, so on Monday there are delicious leftovers to eat.
Over the weekend, I work about 8 hours (not all at once, but in between things).
Some caveats, like I said earlier, I don’t work like this all year round. If I did, I’d go crazy. There are some months where I’m busy, then super crazy busy, and then I’ll have several weeks of relatively little work. As I wrote this, I realized I should try to go to bed earlier, like by 10 pm, because I’m so tired in the morning.
Coincidentally, it’s just after 10 now, so I’ll start now.
Do you go to different grocery stores? What’s your day like?
Filed under: Personal, running 
