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I still don’t have a new normal, but this was about what I expected. On Thursday, I had some dental surgery that has a pretty long recovery time, so I knew going in that I would have enforced downtime. I am not sure which was worse: not knowing how bad it would be for the first round in August, or knowing and plopping my butt down in that dental chair anyway for this second round.

Adulting is so not fun at times.

There’s a huge difference between having time off and actually feeling rested. The first is a calendar entry. The second takes a little more work. I’ve been thinking about how much I want to make room for enjoyable activities rather than simply completing a list of deferred household chores.

I’m looking for ways to reduce friction in my everyday life. I don’t need an elaborate productivity system or a color-coded schedule that becomes another job; I just want better ways of handling the things that must be done. If FernGully is going to burn, it sure would be nice if it took some of the plates off my pile.

So this week was about easing back into things. A bit of laundry, some kitchen tidying, and generally putting the house back together after the wedding without immediately moving piles back to the foreground. I’m able to use the kids’ old rooms (I am one child away from an empty nest) to stage things as I start to recover, reorganize, and repurpose the house for its next phase: a more flexible household that accommodates adult children, guests, hobbies, and whatever else comes next.

I performed a minor miracle and resurrected my starved sourdough starter; the kids naturally absconded with the first loaves. I also made Scandinavian almond bars as an equivalent exchange for their help with prepping the house for the wedding and reception.

Since my daily household headcount is now much diminished, I am generally aiming for one big, very optional, it-is-an-invitation-not-a-summons meal on the weekend. I ended up making Korean beef for lunch on Saturday and having most of the kids over between their Halloween plans.

Other things I’m playing with:

• Taking watercolor lessons from Claude.
• Starting Mandarin with Duolingo.
• Putting together a sewing room/guest room.
• Tidying my office.

I’m also experimenting with using AI as a sort of external organizational assistant for my personal projects. I can see where it provides structure — fast — without having to keep every plan in my head.

I’m not rushing to establish a new routine immediately. For now, I’m experimenting, making small improvements, and figuring out what I want my days to look like. There’s still plenty to do, but I’m starting to enjoy having the time to decide what actually deserves my attention.

As we say at work, “Baby steps.”

Automattic, my employer, offers a very generous sabbatical benefit after five years with them as a way to let us recharge and return to work refreshed. I have been overdue for my second sabbatical for a few years but the stars aligned and I scheduled mine for mid-October to mid-January.

I planned to use my sabbatical to recover from some life stresses, get my house in order from a series of reorganizations to accommodate folks needing a space, and make more room for the things I enjoy by optimizing the things I do not. However, one of the first things on the agenda was hosting a wedding reception for my oldest daughter and her husband.

For 30+ people.

No pressure, folks.

I already use AI professionally, but most of that experience is naturally focused on engineering, systems, and getting work done. I planned to experiment with offloading some of the emotional labor of running a household (much diminished from 8 people a year ago down to 3, but still…) onto modern AIs, so this was a great opportunity to do just that. I gave Chat Gippity (I dare you to call it otherwise in my presence) a rundown of my sabbatical goals, short term goals, known issues like upcoming dental surgery, and my general mental state and let it run with tasking for the week leading into the wedding reception.

One thing I was consciously trying to do differently was alternate work with breaks. Rather than treating the house as one enormous project that had to be conquered in a single heroic effort, I worked on something, stopped, rested, and came back to it. I also wasn’t looking for Martha-Stewart levels of perfection. It is a house, we live in it, it just needed to be good enough.

It worked surprisingly well. I maintained pretty good energy, did not get sick, and my list kept getting shorter.

The biggest thing, in my mind, was feeding everyone safely. Food is my love language (ask my family and friends), and I have had food poisoning enough to know that it is not a good thing. There were some practical food logistics to work out: what could be made ahead, what needed refrigeration, what could be served cold, and how to keep the hot food hot.

And then the wedding happened.

The reception came together, the food was ready, the house was full of family and friends, and the bride and groom were happy. That’s really the part that matters.

There’s something satisfying about taking on a big project, breaking it into manageable pieces, and watching it come together — not unlike what I normally do in my job.

I’m enjoying having some time to experiment with approaching household organization, cooking, learning watercolor, and other personal projects with AI as a collaborator. Where does it genuinely help? Where does it get things wrong? How can I get better results by changing how I ask questions or approach a problem?

It’s a different kind of learning, and part of the fun for me is using AI in a completely different context from my normal workflow and seeing what I can learn from that new experience as well.

The last two years have been super stressful. Here’s hoping 2025 trends in a different direction.

Brazil (1985) is a Christmas movie to watch with the kids. Historical documents are the best. They are suitably horrified.

Edited to add: They may not forgive this one for awhile.