The Startup Spouses

I had an appointment today for a physical, which I haven’t done in over three years. As I waited in the waiting room and then the exam room for two hours, I had plenty of time to think about how life’s necessities get in the way of work. This week, in general, I lost a lot of time. We had an accountant appointment Tuesday, after which I had to sadly revisit all our receipts from 2007. Then I realized last night while writing/watching the Daily Show that the battery in my laptop died. Which means I’ll spend another afternoon this week at the Apple store. I certainly don’t mind visiting the cute guys over at the Genius Bar, but it’s another day lost.

My rant about getting all these boring necessities out of the way is significant to the self-employed because we think about time differently. Now I schedule appointments during the day because I hope I will have more options since I don’t work 9-5. I make time to do organizational tasks, like filing or sorting bills. I also spend a lot of time during the day preparing healthy meals and exercising. While it is nice to pay extra attention to myself and attend to oft-neglected tasks, it also keeps me from my main work.

If I worked in an office environment, I would have tried to do my taxes online, and upon failing, given up and hoped that I never got caught for tax evasion. I would never go to the doctors or any other appointment, which explains why it’s been so many years since I’ve been in the first place. I would ignore my mail and let it accumulate until we have people over, at which point we’d hide it in a box to never be seen again. I would exercise less, eat unhealthily, and save chores for the weekend. Sure, there are those people who have busy jobs, and also manage to keeps their lives in perfect order. I think they’re just evidence that androids are living amongst us unnoticed.

I like that my schedule affords me the opportunity to get more life chores done and be more organized than I have been in a while. But it creates a false sense of productivity. Getting a physical is a item to check off the to-do list, but spending three hours at the doctors does not get one closer to her professional goals.