The Second Week is the Worst

I’ve known for a long time that when you are making changes, that the second week is the hardest – right toward the end of it, things get very difficult to maintain. Everyone starts resisting to the fullest. What I never expect, is how much I, myself, contribute to that.

Kevin has been home for just two weeks. And yesterday was pretty hard. We were crabbing at each other instead of working together, and it was pretty terrible. It was not until late in the day that I realized why. We are both making some huge adjustments, and this is just the time frame in which those adjustments are the hardest.

I think during the day yesterday I was ready to just throw in the towel and figure it wasn’t ever going to work if it was going to be like this. And according to everything I know about human behavior, that is precisely what most people think at the end of two weeks of attempting new changes!

Once it finally dawned on me that this was just part of a process, and that we needed to redouble and get through it, I figured I can last another week – end of the third week is when things usually start to finally come together into a new functioning pattern if you persevere. So I am going to watch and see how it all comes out then.

Because having a spouse come home to work the family business together is no small set of changes. It is HUGE, and it means that we have to insure that our relationship develops on new fronts, and that we develop new skills.

Kevin is still in the “it’s your business” mode, instead of the “it’s MY business” mindset, but hopefully that will change over the next couple weeks too.

It will be a busy week though – we have a kitchen remodel to finish in a client rental, some more work to finish in our own rental, a business fair to attend, and a lot of client and personal web work to do. There just is not enough of me to do it all, and Kevin and David cannot help with some of what needs to be done. I’m sure we will muddle through though.