For the first week of April we were on vacation. As in, not taking vacation days to slave away at the job site, but a bona fide family vacation. That meant two full weekends of potential house work lost! But boy did we need it. We’ve been working at the office or at the job site almost every day since Christmas, and it was really starting to take its toll. I can say that by mid-March I was pretty stressed, short-tempered and demoralized. Honestly the worst I’ve felt since my junior year of College (which was my most intense academic year).

I’ve heard that the Inuit have dozens of different words for snow that describe different types. Well over time I’ve learned a number of different types of fatigue, I just don’t know the names for all of them. 🙂 I have found there is a special kind of mental fatigue that comes from having too many discrete items to keep track of – what some psychologists might call “open loops” that we have to remember or are worrying us. With a full time job that’s hectic enough by itself, plus two kids and a massive project like this, it ends up being more than my brain is wired for. A kind of panic state sets in where I am always certain that I’m forgetting something (and about 1/3 of the time, I’m probably right!) I can’t sustain attention and focus for any duration of time, something I’m usually very good at. I haven’t experienced that in 20 years, and I hope I don’t see it again, or at least for another 20.

So it was good to get away for a week and really disconnect from both work and the house project. We had a nice time with my dad, stepmom, and brother down South in warmer climes. But this isn’t a vacation blog, so I’ll leave it at that.

“But wait,” you say, “this post doesn’t have anything house related in it!” And that’s true. There are really two reasons we created this blog, and having others follow along was the secondary purpose. The first one was to document the experience for ourselves. Our memories are fuzzy and unreliable, so journaling the experience lets us relive it and remember things we’d otherwise later forget. This blog post is here to remember just how tough an undertaking this really is. And for anyone considering doing something similar, be sure to plan some kind of downtime in there or you’ll never make it.

For now we’re mostly refreshed and back in the swing of things. Look for more relevant house progress posts in the days to come.