Originally drafted on April 8-15, 2026.
Revised April 16-17, 2026.

I regret to inform you that in the last week I have not managed to completely solve structuring my calendar to fully support my hot divorcée era. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. One of the things I mentioned in that essay was that just as the way you manage your money should shift over your life, so should it be with your calendar. But often it’s easier to know what you don’t want and that you need some changes, and not always clear to discern what you actually want and are capable of shifting around.

When you’re in a very destabilized period of your life, which I am still in with the wake of my divorce, ongoing eldercare challenges with my Mom, and a challenging self-employment environment, you don’t really have anything that resembles a typical week. I have the platonic ideal of what I know I want my week to look like, but in reality it rarely works out that way. As a person who LOVES TO PLAN and also holds myself to impossibly high standards, it’s really frustrating to feel like I’m constantly falling short of achieving the perfectly scheduled and executed week.

When I’m feeling totally discombobulated or disorganized, one of the things I like to ask myself is “What is working well, and how can I use that as a guidepost for doing more of the same?”

I may not have a typical week, but the one thing that is very typical for me is that when I am at home, my Sunday mornings are always the same. I have been a part of the Religious Society of Friends, aka the Quakers, for more than a decade. Every Sunday when I’m at home in Cincinnati (and sometimes if I’m on the road in another major city!) I go to the Quaker meeting house for a few hours of worship/fellowship/socialization. Being a Quaker is such a steady force in my life that a few weeks ago when my therapist asked me what was stable in my life given the constant instability I’ve faced in recent years, my automatic response was my Quaker community.

One of the reasons I really like being a Quaker is that it scratches the itch of being both a standing scheduled experience in my life, while also allowing for connection with a large group of people and some degree of spontaneity. I think this is best illustrated by how our meeting has a monthly potluck at the beginning of the month following worship. I never know who I’ll end up sitting next to at the potluck or what kind of conversations I’ll have, but I know it’s on my calendar and I can count on nurturing my connections with whoever I’ve spent time with.

The biggest challenges I’m facing right now with figuring out how to adjust my calendar to do all the things I want to do and see all the people I want to see include the following constraints:

1. Among my social circles, I am nearly always the initiator/scheduler/cat wrangler. I don’t always love this, but I have accepted that if I want to have a full social life and friends, then I have to be willing to take on the labor of scheduling. Most people are fundamentally bad about prioritizing their friendships. I, however, am not most people, because I am a Capricorn with zero chill.

2. A lot of my socialization is typically one to one. For some things this makes a lot of sense (if I am on a date with a new person and we are still nurturing our connection, if I am seeing a friend who has been through some tough shit and they need some support, etc). On the other hand, there are only so many hours in a week!

3. Because I am a busy person who travels semi-regularly for work, my calendar often books out WEEKS in advance.

4. I don’t have a ton of discretionary spending money right now.

So in thinking about why my Quaker meeting works so well for my life (it happens regardless of whether or not I show up, and it has a great mix of old people and newcomers, and it is structured for meaningful connections), I am considering how I could apply these characteristics elsewhere for my schedule. And the two things I keep coming back to are:

1. Hosting more things at my apartment

2. Having “office hours” at a local bar or coffee shop

Back when my ex and I were homeowners, we used to host periodic potluck dinners that helped achieve this exact kind of thing. They were always structured similarly so guests knew what to expect, but we never had the exact same crowd twice since it was an open door policy. Our potluck dinners were well-loved by our extended community and were the kinds of events that became popular enough to get homebodies out of the house.

But now I live in a crappy tiny divorce apartment! So hosting has felt like a heavy lift and sometimes triggers my downward mobility class shame, but it’s something I am considering trying to do more regularly again. The great thing about hosting is you call most, if not all of the shots, you can see more than one person at once, and if you’re broke you can still host but ask your guests to bring something to share. The hosting ideas I’m currently kicking around include a monthly Trivial Pursuit night or a “Sunday soup and salad” potluck night.

The “office hours” at a local bar or coffee shop is an idea I’ve encountered a few times around the internet but have yet to put into practice. I love this idea a lot because I can’t tell you how often I hear some variation of a friend/acquaintance/cutie telling me “Hey we should hang out sometime!!!” and I’m like “Cool send me your availability over the next couple of weeks and I’ll check my calendar!!!” and then I…. never hear back from them because unfortunately God did not make everyone into zero chill Capricorns. I like the idea of telling someone “Hey, I’m always at [BAR] on [DAY AND TIME], feel free to come there next week.” Maybe they come, maybe they don’t, but either way they know where to find me!

PS - This is a free post, but many of my posts are paywalled. If you’d like to go ahead and buy a subscription now, you can click the button above. $25 a year helps pay for my cat’s portion of the monthly rent. Hugs and kisses to the 23 folks who have already upgraded their subscriptions. I truly appreciate your support :)