It's A Process..

Since I am doing ALL OF THE GOALS right now one of the things I really wanted to work on and needed to try and do is schedule time. Now as you all know, I don't have a set schedule. Haven't had one in ages. And I normally really love that. 

But...

When you are trying to make sure you workout, and meditate, and cook dinner, and clean house, and write, and...well time becomes a thing. So I sat down and figured out a daily schedule. I did blocks of time. Like from 6-7 it's get up, get breakfast done and make smoothies. From 7-8 I'll finish my coffee and peruse my socials. 8-9:30 is round one of chores...and on and on like that. 

Right now we are in the noon to two block for writing. Just so you know. 

Now, I have absolutely zero thought that this is going to be hard and fast. Today there has already been bleed over from the workout/cooldown/shower time into my lunch. And I need to get bread started by 1, and the laundry is not a chore that fits into tidy time boxes, it spaces through out the day. So there will be days where time will be borrowed and moved from section to section. But I needed some sort of framework to set up the basics.

And who knows how long I'll stick with this at all. I mean I tend to rebel against rules, even my own. But I actually like it right now. Or at least the idea of it. But it is only day three of planning things out, and only day one of a weekday schedule so...

The biggest challenge I see is this time slot right here and now. The "I will write for these two hours every day" space. I scheduled it to run with Brent's normal workout time so my TYPE TYPE TYPE doesn't bug him and his conference calls don't bug me. But that's not always going to work. His schedule shifts as well. I might end up wearing headphones with some sort of white noise while I write. I've never been a music person while I blog or while I write fiction. I can be inspired by a song, and often am, for a fiction piece but I tend to write in silence. My voice is all the noise I can handle. But we are in the sharing times so I will adapt. 

But it isn't just the shared space and trying to work around that, it's the whole BE INSPIRED RIGHT NOW! I see this being the time frame that ends up borrowing from others quite often. Nonfiction is no big deal since once I have a direction on that I can generally do it whenever, but fiction? It's hard to be creative on demand but writing is almost always a priority so if a story comes to me I will shift things. I just need to be honest about the time I've shifted and make sure to go back to whatever I shifted away from. 

I also have the challenge of being more motivated in the morning to do things than in the afternoon. But I can't fit in EVERYTHING in the morning. Which is why chores got a split block. Some time in the morning, some in the afternoon. I also viewed the morning chore time as part of my creative process. Which, holy fuck, sound so pretentious...but it is. Not pretentious, part of my process. Cleaning is one of those things you can do without really thinking too much about it. Dusting isn't complicated. But once you activate that part of your brain it leaves the rest to kind of wander around and poke at things. I cannot even tell you the number of stories I've come up with while scrubbing a shower. Though I do often joke that it's probably the cleaning fumes...

Working out needs to be done earlier in the day rather than later as well. If I tried to push it to the afternoon I'd just keep pushing it away. I love being in shape and really don't care for getting that way. In the before times going to the gym every morning before dropping Brent off for work kept me consistent. And I thought about just doing a version of that, eat breakfast then workout before starting anything else, but I'm trying to make sure I get my smoothie in shortly after lifting weights and if I have it at 9 then I want a big lunch at noon. If I work out later and then have my smoothie around 11:30 I can survive with an afternoon snack instead. And since one of my 2021 goals is to lose weight, not doubling up on calories seems like a good idea. 

So round one of chores and the workout take the morning. And they really pretty much do. If I lift and do cardio that's a chunk of time, then cooling down and taking a shower adds a bit more to that. An hour and a half of chores before the workout starts and we are pushing into noon by the time lunch is over. And NOON IS TIME TO BE CREATIVE.

Schedules are so weird. 

But I'm trying. I like the idea of the framework, I like the idea of the structure. I like the idea of being able to fit in what I want to do and see what room I have left for other things.

Oh my gosh...

I am treating my daily life like I treat my vacations! 

Or at least before I succumbed to the whole unplanned beach relaxation days idea. 

I knew no good could come of doing free time on vacation...

And now it's almost one and laundry needs to be switched around and the bread needs to be started so my two hours of writing is closer to one, but that's okay. Like I said, it's a framework.

Guidelines...

I'm not so good with rules, but I think I can work with frames and guides.