Until now, my time management technique has been all about wresting time away from the forces of entropy. I had plenty of time in my day, I just wasted it watching TV, playing computer games, and browsing the internet, instead of reading, writing, socializing, and working. As such, any time that I spent doing anything (rather than nothing) was time that I was using well. And, since I worked from home, I had infinite flexibility to set my own hours and schedule.

Given this set of conditions, my approach was to have outcome-based goals. By the end of the week, I wanted to have written 5,000 words and read 2 books and written 3 blog posts and etc. etc. Within the week, my time could be divided any way that I wanted. I didn’t care what I did on each day and in each hour.

Over time, my goals became more numerous and specific and I started having daily goals (like walking 10,000 steps per day, for instance). But I still had so much time that I didn’t quite need to think about what happened when and how much time I should devote to it.

Those days are gone!

Now, I have approximately 4-6 hours of school-related stuff to do every single weekday. That means I have to be places at specific times. If I still hewed to my old ways of doing things, I’d inevitably begin to drop balls. Thus, I’ve begun to plan out exactly what I am going to do each day.

In fact, I’ve found that on each day I have enough time to do almost everything that I want to do. For instance, today I:

• Woke up at 7:20 AM
• Browsed facebook / rejected stories until 8:05 AM
• Revised the novel (it is going so well! The first chapter is loads better now!) until 10:45 AM
• Investigated a mysterious leak in my ceiling until 11 AM (the upstairs neighbor’s toilet flooded).
• Showered and primped until 11:30 AM
• Went and checked out some library holds until 12 PM
• Got food and went to the Brody Learning Commons until 12:30 PM
• Met with two students until about 1:30 PM
• Did some reading (finished Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street!) until 3 PM
• Had our fiction-writing workshop until 6 PM
• Went to the bar with the fiction folks until 8:15 PM
• Walked until 8:45 PM
• Mailed out a hilarious cat video to the fiction folks until 9 PM

• Wrote this blog post until 9:20 PM (and counting!!!)

Anyway, after this is posted, I need to prepare my lesson plan and handouts for tomorrow’s class! Surely, now, that is a perfect day, que no? I mean, I’ve written, read, taken class, written a blog, prepared for class, and socialized.

But sadly, no. I’d meant to go to Target today and buy a coffee machine. I’d also meant to clean my shower and pay my quarterly taxes. I also haven’t done my reading for my Spanish class.

Tomorrow, I might do these things, but they likely mean I’ll fail to do something else. Yesterday, I had intended to write a blog post, but ran out of time.

I know, right? I think this is just the way my life is gonna be for the remainder of the semester. It’s alright. There’s still plenty of flex time in my schedule. For instance, yesterday I fucked off after an hour and a half of writing and took a nap instead (it was excellent!)

Yes, my life is very very very very very very hard.