This week I’m running double-time to push my content back on track. I’m still paying for letting resistance knock me down a couple weeks ago, but this week I will catch up. I always planned to have extra content made up to act as a buffer for when life kicks me about, but never seem to be able to get ahead. Sometimes it’s easier to catch up than get ahead.
When it comes to creative pursuits, it seems like the thing you should do is the thing that you always put off. If something is hard, or you fear to do it, then it’s probably the thing that will help you most. That doesn’t make the doing any easier though. I have phone calls that I’m putting off, web articles and short stories I know I need to plan and send off, and basically all-around work to do. If I were writing full time I would have no excuse to do these things, although I’m not sure that I do have an excuse for not doing these things anyway. I tell myself that I’m too tired to call people because working nights means that I have to stay up to call people during normal business hours, and I say that I need to relax sometimes and regenerate my creativity.
Can you see Resistance’s dark talons? Calling someone doesn’t require gargantuan alertness, just less cowardice. And relaxing and not burning out is a legitimate concern, but… I put an app tracking program on my computer ages ago, that tracks how long I spend playing games and watching YouTube videos and contrasts it with how long I spend writing the recording the podcast. Last week I spent 10.5 hours writing. Sounds pretty good eh? I worked 35 hours at my day job too, so a 45-hour workweek is a good slog and probably should be enough… except I spent 38.5 hours playing games and watching YouTube. Maybe some of that YouTube time was looking up how to tweak microphone settings for the podcast, but not much of it.
Typically, when confronted with facts like these, I waste more time by creating a complicated spreadsheet to allocate my time better, which I don’t follow. For this week, I think it’s time to bump my writing hours up to 15 hours per week. It’s a small jump, but if I can make sure the extra time is productive time I can get a lot more done in the week, and still leave plenty of time after I have finished work to bugger around.