Tag: Schedule

  • ODDS and ENDS: Gym Time, CUBS Anxiety, and Corduroy Pants

    ODDS and ENDS: Gym Time, CUBS Anxiety, and Corduroy Pants

    (Dear I fear we’re facing a problem…)

    I wanted to go to the gym today. I know, I’m a little scared, too! (In a weird way, this feels like the call is coming from the inside of the house, if you know what I mean.) I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this development. For the past month, I started going to the gym at the start of the day. In the past, I had fit the gym in later during the day, and I found ways and excuses to not go. This shift came from two places. The first was that I had to admit to myself that my old way of doing things wasn’t working. If I was serious about getting healthier and back in shape, I had to try something different. The second place my change came from was my best friend and old college roommate. He, in his very subtle way over the past year, had hinted that starting you day with a workout can help you in multiple ways, the most important being if you schedule it as the first thing you do, then you are less likely to miss it. Provided you stay committed. I guess I’m committed, because I wanted to go this morning. I’m up to four days a week, and I think I will add the fifth. Things are changing… What’s going on?

    It has been a weird time for me when it comes to the Cubs. I’m very excited that they are in NLDS and at the same time I can’t watch them. I say this because every time I have watched them, they have lost. I’m not saying that I am the reason they lost, but it does seem odd. The other odd thing is that there was one game I didn’t watch and they lost, so there must be another Cub fan out there that is cursed with this ability. Oh, I know it’s not like it was in ’16, and the Brewers are pretty damn good, but I would like to see Cubs play the Dodgers for the NL Pennant. But if the Cubs make it to play the Dodgers, odds are I won’t be able to watch them. My anxiety would be too high, and it would doom the team.

    I want some corduroy pants! I used to have some, but maybe ten years ago, I tossed them as the knees were wearing thin. I have regretted that decision every day since. The pair that I tossed I had purchased at the GAP back in 2003. I remember this because I went with my then girlfriend to the mall near our campus, and working at the GAP was a mutual friend of ours who was willing to give her employee to my girlfriend. While at the store, the two of them talked me into trying on a pair of brown corduroy pants, which I had no intention of buying. But hot damn, I sure did look good in them! Not that I had the money to buy pants that day, but I did it anyway. The girlfriend didn’t last, but the pants did. Well, lasted until 2015 that is.

  • Dispatch from the Car: Schedule Issues?

    Let me establish this from the beginning, it is 9am and I have my computer on my lap while I sit in my car. I’m doing the Alt Side Parking dance, and any minute the street sweeper will coming rolling by. I bring all of this up because I’m having more issues with scheduling my life. The only time I would have today to get any writing done is this magical hour and a half; sitting in the car on the streets of New York.

    I write about scheduling often, I know. I just might be on a Quixotic quest to somehow find the perfect way to lay out all the tasks I must accomplish in a week, and like puzzle pieces, find a way to make them all fit together for maximum efficiency, and minimum effort. I am positive that I can create this system.

    And the reason that I think this is because for ten plus years, my day job was scheduling. I scheduled, rehearsals, classes, and events for a couple of studios in New York. The more efficient and tighter I could make a schedule of studio spaces, the more money I could make for the company, and the better off we all were. I wasn’t the greatest at it, but I was pretty good, and had a decent career because of it.

    Yet, in my personal life, I am really shitty at it.

    I could also argue to myself that what I am really trying to do is put order on the uncontrollable. It’s like I’m taking chicken nuggets, and trying to assemble them to recreate a chicken. Sadly, those pieces, no matter how much energy is devoted to this endeavor, will never fit together to form anything resembling a chicken. Let alone, I’m not even sure nuggets are chicken.

    I hope you get my metaphor.

    The point here people, is that I feel compelled to blame my lack of an effective schedule as the reason why I am not accomplishing more in my day. I need to complete something every day, check a box, cross it off my list, as long as I get something done. (I think this is the real reason I blog every day. I accomplish a task five days a week regardless if anyone sees it.) And right now, I don’t feel like I am accomplishing anything.

    And I haven’t gone to the gym in three weeks, but that’s a different story.

    (Like, Comment, Share, or Follow. Any one of those will do, but a combination, or selecting all four will make me a very happy blogger out here in the sticks. And Thank you for taking the time to read it.)

  • ODDS and ENDS: New Schedule, Rewriting, and August 6th

    (I do less before 9am, than most people do all day.)

    The kid is out of school for summer which means that stay-at-home-dad’s school year schedule has been thrown out the window. I know it isn’t my job to “entertain” the kid every moment of the day, but it does mean that I am her go to person for questions, and just about everything else. The quandary I find myself in is when do I write? I was knocking out blogs in the morning, but as of this week, the time is hard to find. I might have to write at night and publish in the morning. Or, whatever. I’ll figure out the new schedule.

     While I was on vacation, I didn’t do much writing, though I did spend a bit of time thinking about it. What I came up with is that I have to rewrite a story. And it’s a story that I have rewritten three times already. And it’s a story that I have submitted to four different lit journals. Not that it matters, as the chance of it getting published, even if it is rewritten, are slim at best. I just can’t stop tinkering with it. On one hand, I want to get it right, and on the other hand, I wonder if I keep messing with it as a form of procrastination?

    Premiere League starts up on August 6th. Well, that’s when Tottenham’s first match is.

  • Coronavirus: Still At Home

    It has been a tough four days getting used to being home all the time. We don’t have a big apartment, and we are making the best that we can with our day. We do have a schedule that we are trying to stick to, and also trying to make time for both of us to work, watch the kid, and also, we are trying to find some personal alone time to decompress. Walks are helping, but we are all feeling the strain of this new normal.

    I have to limit my access to the news, as it does bring me down, and make me feel rather hopeless. I was in a good mood this morning, then I had a computer issue that affected my ability to work, and that started me down a spiral of thought that we are in an un-survivable situation; That nothing will work or help.

    And then I took a deep breath, and played “store” with my daughter, and I felt a little better. I talked it over with my wife, who is also being brave but is filled with anxiety as well, and both of us admitting that we are nervous did take the pressure off. We are in this together.

    The best I can equate this to, is like the Great Depression. When the people’s lives, across just about every spectrum, were affected in such a titanic manner. My grandparents got through that, and even were able to joke about it. So, I know it can be done.