Report on my Monday flash card work

In my previous post, I said,

" . . . I'm blocking out some serious time to work on flash cards--this should be fun. I'll let know you how it goes."

It didn't happen.

Sunday after church I knew I would be too tired to play the big 8 P.M. tournament, so I decided to take a nap first.  I think that I slept for about 5 hours.  After the tournament, I was tired, but not able to go to sleep.  I'm a very sound sleeper (my wife said that I didn't wake up when a cat was jumping up and down on me) but I often have a lot of trouble falling asleep.

I was too tired to play or study, but unable to sleep, from late Sunday night well into Monday afternoon. Once I got my sleep schedule somewhat straightened out, I was facing the Wednesday morning city deadline to have all of our leaves bagged and raked.  As soon as the weather cleared I had to take care of that as well.

Today (Wednesday) was a family meeting about a serious medical issue, and on it goes.  My wife keeps telling me that the problems that I'm having getting my hours in are unavoidable.  That may be true, but on the other hand, when we still had three children at home I often worked 60 hours or more per week between my "regular job", overtime, and the National Guard.  For some reason, when I can in theory control my hours, that never seems to happen.

It's incredibly frustrating.  I have to stop reacting and start planning again, but it never seems to be possible.

Part of the problem is that I don't really control my schedule, or much of anything else.  We have one car right now, and my wife needs to take it to work (with her hours varying quite a bit lately.)  She also has additional obligations, such as breakfast meetings, taking care of her aging mother, and being a tour guide for the local historic homes.

Under different circumstances, when I finished a study session or there was a break between tournaments, I could jump in the car and do my errands.  I have tried to plan, and save all of my errands for the one night a week when I usually get the car, but that night changes just about every week.  It's very difficult when I'm fighting to conquer my ADD and be organized, and I can't really plan or schedule anything.  Lately the only that times I put anything in my planner are the times that I know that I won't be able to play or study.

I don't want to end this on such a pessimistic note, so I will say that one of the major handicaps to my making this work has been taken care of.  Read about it in my next post.