Running a Business While Someone Is Asking Where Their Shoes Are

The two bosses

I run a business. I also run a household, and a lost-and-found operation for footwear. Both jobs consider themselves the priority, and only one of them can be muted.

There is no version of this where the day is perfectly balanced. There is only a version where the most important thing happens first and the rest gets triaged.

Systems that survive contact with children

My work happens in named blocks: the deep-work morning block, the afternoon rat race block, the returning phone calls on the way to get the kids block, and the post bedtime rally to do a kitchen reset while zoning out to my latest Korean drama on Netflix.

Anything that only works when nobody interrupts me is not a system. It's a wish. Systems here have to work on a day with a sick kid and a dentist appointment.

The mental load is a line item

Remembering the permission slip is work. Knowing we're out of the milk is work. None of it appears on on a to-do list miraculously, and all of it spends mental energy that is non-existent.  

So I budget for it now: fewer commitments, earlier deadlines I set myself, and a hard stop at pickup that I mostly honor. Mostly.

Why I still like it

Because at the end of the day I built something that's mine, in between the shoe searches. It's messy and slower than the highlight reels suggest, and I would choose it again.