When Calvin was born I went from working 40 hrs/week at the library to working 20 hrs/week from home. It seemed a good decision at the time. Working from home definitely allowed me more flexibility when Calvin was sick as well as an easy way to do off-hour server maintenance. However, this coming November we will be migrating to a new Integrated Library System (the catalog et al.). The selection process was hard enough to do at 20 hrs/week and both my manager and I agreed that the actual migration would be impossible.

So, this last Monday I upped my hours from 20 hrs/week to 32 hrs/ week. I also shifted from working a Sunday, Tuesday-Friday schedule to a straight Monday-Friday schedule. I planned several months ago to try to work most of the additional hours either during Calvin’s existing preschool time or early in the morning. However, I wasn’t sure if this plan would survive contact with the reality. So far though, it’s working out. I’ve been getting up at 5:40 each morning, showering and running downstairs to work for an hour and a half¹. Then, I take a break to eat, get Calvin ready, and drop him off at preschool. Then work from 9:30-2:30. I don’t have much flex time before picking up Calvin at 3:00 but so far I’ve really enjoyed being able to work more. I’m not nearly so stressed at all the things I’m not getting done :) As a bonus, I’m also walking about 4-6 miles everyday on the treadmill.