Not surprisingly, my process for writing blog posts is very much like my process for writing fiction: Thought, followed by actual writing. The thought part takes the longest; once I know what I’m going to say, I say it pretty quickly.
Which is a roundabout way of admitting I knew what I was going to talk about today, long before I read Barb’s Tuesday post…and discovered that once again, we were on the same wavelength. I, too, have been thinking about how to accomplish everything I want to accomplish, in the limited amount of time available to me.
As usual, I was thinking about this because I was frustrated. I’ve said before that working out is important to me — I’m with Juvenal, who once said a sound mind in a healthy body was one of the things to desire in life. When I exercise, I’m calmer, happier, more confident. My preferred exercise — weight training — is meditative and calm; focusing on form sends my awareness inward to my body, away from the endless, anxious yapping of my brain. As much as I like exercising, getting to the gym has been difficult for some time. Though I’ve tried, I can’t get myself to go before work — 5:30 is just too early for me — and I’ve been too busy at night to go after work. So what’s a girl to do?
This girl broke down and joined the gym across the street from work, so she can go during her lunch break. The new gym is more expensive than the old gym, and I resisted the additional expense for a long time. Last week, I faced facts. I’m not going to the less expensive gym near my home, so that’s wasted money. My health is important, too important to let an extra $38 a month stand in the way of taking care of myself. I bit the bullet.
The lesson in this is to be honest with myself about my habits and abilities, and to go with the grain of my nature, not against it. I wasted time, money and emotional energy trying to make myself behave in a way that ran contrary to who I am. I know it’s going to be easier to go to the gym on my lunch break than trying to make myself get up really early, or go after a long day at work, when I have other things to do.
The lesson applies to writing as well. I’m most productive late at night, before I go to bed. I keep thinking I’ll work on the bus, I’ll work on my lunch break, I’ll do this, I’ll do that. The reality is, I do none of those things. But if I sit up in bed and open up my notebook, I write. I get the work done. The key now is to make that happen every night, to go with the grain of my nature, so I don’t waste time or effort trying to make myself do things against the grain. I think that’s the best time management tool there is: to recognize who I am and how I work, and work within those bounds, rather than trying to force myself to be something I’m not.
