The S Word

I pride myself on being a relatively intelligent person, but know I can be a stubborn one as well. For some some time now I've been thinking it might be best to go on a s-s- *cough* schedule. *shudders* (OK one of my friends has been strongly hinting it might be a help and I've finally decided to listen).



I don't know why the idea of a schedule (ugh!) makes me cringe so. It may be a tiny bit of defiance left over from my teen years where I insisted I was clever enough to get everything I needed to get done in time (usually at the last minute) and still get A's. My youthful arrogance got a hard smack of reality once I hit college. Oh I still did well, as long as I kept some sort of system to organize things.

So fast forward to today. I have so many things I want to learn and do in this lifetime and it has become sadly apparent I can't do them all. I need to prioritize (*pouts*) and organize (*cries*). I love writing, but I need to keep "office hours" that stay more or less steady and mesh with my other responsibilities (work, being a mom, being a wife). Organization sounds overly confining and limiting, especially when talking about artistic endeavors, but it also is a pretty good way to make sure I have time to enjoy doing what it is I like doing. 

I started feeling better about this whole organizing business when I put down my writing hours for both prose and poetry (as one of the newest Toads in the Imaginary Garden, I'm stoked to regularly participate there and over in Dash of Sunny as well). I scheduled in some review time for my other interests (shimmy drills, Japanese tea ceremony postures,and doodling all get their quick bursts of review time as a reward for other hard work). While a lot of my daily spiritual practices are reflexive at this point, I set aside some time for some extra development of knowledge bases I was interested in exploring. I even managed to formalize the way I do chores a bit better.

Yay, doodle time! 

So yes, I'm still a little leery about the whole schedule thing, but I've promised myself that I can be flexible and adjust things as time goes on. I also plan on giving myself goof off days once a month just to know there'll be one day I can bum around and do nothing if I want to. I'm cautiously optimistic this will all work out and that far from being rained upon, the passions in my life will march on in an orderly parade, rather than bang into each other like angry moshers. 


13 comments:

  1. As a heavily-scheduled person myself, I can say that organization and prioritization is the only way to get things done. And even then, it can sometimes be a challenge. Good luck!

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    1. Well the first few days are going well. Things got done and no one is dead. I expect there to be challenges when one of my activities goes through a peak time, but try to remind myself that I *chose* to do these things, and I can un-choose at any time. LOL, of course I don't want to un-choose anything, so organization is my only recourse.

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  2. I feel like I'm in this exact same place!

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    1. It's very frustrating isn't it! I'm hoping that it will bring some sort of sanity to my hectic pace.

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  3. Gollum's reaction to the "s" word is the same as mine, though, honestly... I probably need to work one out so I can better balance the things I need to do, with the things I ought to do, with the things I want to do. *sigh*

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    1. Right? It's so crazy making sometimes. At least the nice part was that I saw where I was spending too much time on stuff that didn't really make me very happy, or at least not as happy as time spent pursuing my interests.

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  4. I would be able to function without a schedule, but I suspect I would never get anything done. I suspect that once you've been doing it for a while, it will become second nature.

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    1. That's the plan. I made myself write up a bunch of things on the schedule just to get used to the idea. When I started hyperventilating I reminded myself that a bunch of those are just habits I'm trying to develop. Soon, I won't need to write it down, because it will just be part of my day, like tooth brushing and exercise.

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  5. I am like you, the idea of schedules makes me freak out. Maybe it reminds us of school? haha

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  6. I wish you all the best! I don't think I schedule things, unless it's important. Like doing taxes! LOL!

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    1. Ugh, taxes! I dread those every year. Guess I better put that on the schedule too!

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