In the last week, I’ve posted to my blog about how hard self motivation is, and how poker has taught me discipline in many areas of my life. Over the course of that same week, I’ve proven one point (the former), and completely shot the other (the latter) to hell.
Self-motivation is tempered – or eviscerated – by distraction, but it’s even worse when there doesn’t feel like there are enough hours in the day to complete the tasks set before oneself. I’m not yet understanding how I can eliminate a job that took up 10 to 15 hours of my day and only add an hour or so of blogging to my plate, and yet still feel like I’m short on time every day I’m home. Couple that with a decent, if not robust, social life and now the demands on my time are oddly overwhelming.
Yeah, yeah, priorties, blah, blah sacrifice, neh. I get it. I’m not posting this to complain, it’s merely an observation. My brain knows what I’m supposed to do, but developing the understanding of how to do it will take a little more effort than I thought. I have two goals for the month of February: finish the first draft of my novel and write one blog post per day. Both are goals I’m going to complete, but this weekend proved a significant obstacle when I didn’t write anything on the novel for three days, and I’ve so far missed two blog posts.
On top of all of that, I still haven’t had a chance to engage in anything really leisurely outside of the planned events of the weekend. Everyone that I worked with said how jealous they were that I’d just get to play video games all day. The thought always brought a smile to my face, because it’s something I’ve never been able to do. That smile is still on my face, because oh what a fantasy that thought is.
No matter how much time we seem to have available to us, we always seem to fill it. When I had a full time job, I still managed to maintain a website, produce two podcasts, and write (somewhat) consistently, as well as maintaining a regular poker game, gaming with friends, and playing video games. Quitting my job was the bomb-blast that shattered the structure into which I’ve molded my life for the last nine years, scattering all of my responsibilities to the four winds. It’s time for me to reign them in.
I promise, with only a couple of crossed fingers, that this will be the last observation I post about my time-management skills. It just happens to be a topic in the forefront of my mind.
