Friday, January 13, 2012

Old Habits Die Hard

(Ha. I mistyped the title at first. Typed "Old Habits Diet Hard". Probably cause I was just reading my friends' blogs and they are all talking about food, dieting, weight loss for the new year. I suppose old habits may diet hard as well, huh?)

So this blog is just a habit for me. Sometimes I leave it alone; other times I type every day or even more times during the day. It seems to go along with how much determination I am putting into my work life. When I am more relaxed, or occupied with other parts of my life, then I am not so present here.

But when I am trying to be creative or to push myself to produce intellectual products, then I find that this space warms me up. It is my stretch, my limbering exercise. Is is also my distraction and my procrastination, so I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. But I think I am too harsh on myself sometimes. When I relax and go with the flow then I produce more overall.

More overalls. That would be helpful to farmers. Just a whiff of whimsy there.

I have a very nice daily/weekly schedule for the new year. In general, I make schedules for myself and then completely ignore them. But I think this one is different. It mirrors the things I am already doing in day to day life. In fact, if anything, it helps me put everything I do into writing so that I can see it all and make it fit in together. I do try to do so much that I often feel like I am dropping things from my days.

My schedule doubles my work time. It gives me regular exercise and makes sure I get to yoga classes to nurture my body and my soul. It has plenty of time built in for the errands I love to run, for caring for the girls, and even for shopping. It's a choppy schedule, cutting each day into two hour chunks, but that is how I tend to live my life. Whether that is by necessity because there are so many things to cram into each day, or whether that is my preference because I have a short attention span and quickly get restless, I am not sure. Probably a bit of both, and probably they have each reinforced the other. I know that when I am anxious, I cope better if I keep moving from task to task, circling around enough to get most things done in a timely way. And I've always worked in a hectic, choppy way, first as a waitress, then as a teacher, with lots of activity and decision-making and physical motion. I don't think I'm cut out for a straight office routine or desk job. Probably why I've never had one.

So it's a good schedule and I'm excited to have it. Even printed a copy and posted it on the fridge. That way I can just look at it and see where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing at any given time. And I think as long as I show up at my computer and make an effort during my "work" blocks of time, even if I do occasionally veer into blogland, or even worse, the dreaded wasteland of Yahoo! articles (they never say anything important, have you ever noticed that? And at their worst they are idle gossip about people I have never met and will never meet!!!), as long as I put in the time at the keyboard, then over time the Work will come.

And a new habit will be born.

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