Time Management

Time keeps seeming to get away from me. I am starting to realize that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I spend far too much time trying to recover from the night before. I really am trying to do better. Even though, I say this a few hours before band practice, which always brings with it the possibility of an unpleasant morning. Tonight especially. I guess the drummer is sick. I say “I guess” because I heard it second hand from my guitar player. The guitar player still wanted to hang out. I thought that was pretty cool. It might seem weird, but I still felt glad that he wanted to hang out with me. He's the closest thing I have to a friend. With the exception of Susan, of course. I know we're in a band together, but that doesn't necessarily mean “friends.” Anyway, before I get too far away from the point, if there is one, “Hanging Out” is a rare occasion, and I welcome all of the things that go along with it. But, however, in general, I am attempting to do much better. Realizing I'm wasting my time recovering is hitting me like a lead brick. I have things I want to do. And instead, I sit around miserable wishing I had spent my time last night more wisely. I am ready. I was good last night. I felt great this morning! I woke up at 8:30 am, all on my own. I had slept enough. I was refreshed. I was ready to get some stuff done. Yet, as lunch time rapidly approached, I was found wondering where my morning had gone. I got up and got started. But, four hours later, I had to try to remember how my time got spent.

I used to think I had a pretty good grasp of my time management. I no longer feel that way. I think it took me about 45 minutes to e-mail my Mom. I thought it was going to take about 5-10. Apparently I spent almost 20 minutes looking up words. Of which, I was only going to look up two. The only thing that took the time I thought it would was downloading last week's practice. That's right, last week's practice, which as I'm sure you can guess, should have been done already. Now I've only got 30 minutes to finish this up, before I go get Stella Mae, and then I still have two more things to get done before 4 pm. And, all of this is with one other thing I omitted from today's schedule, which I decided would best be done tomorrow. Hence the problem, stacking things up to be done tomorrow. I used to live my life like there was no tomorrow, and now tomorrow is apparently when I'm going to do all the stuff that I didn't get done today. And the kicker is, this is all happening with an early start. I feel fine, and got started early, and still had to push some stuff 'til tomorrow. But now we're “Hanging Out,” which could quite possibly mean that I'm not getting anything done before work tomorrow. That is one of the biggest problems with leaving stuff for tomorrow, we never know what tomorrow may bring. And then stuff gets left undone. I hate that word, “undone.” Although, you wouldn't know it looking around our Apartment. We still have our Christmas decorations up, and have not yet put away gifts.

In our defense, I will say that my parents got intensely out of control with the gifts this year. We really have no place to put all the stuff that they got us. I keep trying to make people aware of the limited space we have. I think they take it as modesty when I say that we don't really need, or want anything. But I really do prefer things that are perishable, because we have no storage. Even if we wanted to “store” it, our storage unit is half an hour away, so we have to really decide what stays and what goes. It's no excuse, but it truly is not a matter of just putting it away, we have to decide what to do with it. Just so you know, that is not what I was planning on doing tomorrow. That is going to take a lot more time than I have tomorrow. I will say that there is an advantage to leaving yourself something to do. Having things to set your mind on and see through to the end, especially when they cannot be completed in a single day, builds character. But, letting the “To-Do” lists pile up is a nasty little game that sucks you in. At least, in our situation, the solution is unavoidable. We can only work around it for so long. Something has to be done! However, the pile of “To-Do” lists in our minds are not always that easy to see. I don't know where that last line came from, so I'm just going to leave it in there. In closing let me just say that at this point I've got at least two things going in my favor: 1) A desire to make a change and, 2) My guitar player's self control can be used to my benefit, if I listen.

Daughn