Confession #47: Temporal Deficiency

Yes, I must confess, I am temporally deficient, especially when it comes to home repair projects. My wife, Tracy, will confirm this. Emphatically. (Repeatedly.) (Justifiably.) Thus, this week's project, painting the exterior of our condo's nine basement windows took longer than I expected.

I figured, oh, no problem, there's not much wood to them, and half the paint has already been worn away (the windows are in pretty bad shape). I'll be done in a couple hours. It's a one-weekend project. It never really works that way . Instead, the paint scraping took a lot longer (and a lot more energy) than expected. Then there was sanding. And vacuuming. And washing. Caulking. Repairing the window glazing. Minor repairs. Taping. Finally painting (I still have one coat to go).

It's not like I'm a bumbling newbie to home repair. I've owned eight houses and done lots of work on all of them, so this is common ground. Yet, for some reason, this great groundswell of optimism (and self-delusion) tends to swirl around me when it's time to guess how long a project will take.

So far, I've always been great about making writing deadlines, but as I try to land more writing freelance jobs, I'm going to need to make sure I get my time estimator gene whipped into shape. I'd had big plans this week for the new freelance job exploration, but a lot of that got eaten up by painting and school projects. Next week will be different. (Right?) I've also been fighting a bit of an emotional slump--but I that's closely related to finishing up the draft of my new novel last week. Even though there's still more work to be done, the emotional release of a major draft completion often leads to a blue period. Being a bit at sea for how to handle the new job/freelance stuff makes it trickier, but I have a feeling it was all unavoidable. Next week is a new week.

Scheming (again)

I’ve got a new time scheme I want to try out, inspired by a friend who is adamant about protecting her writing time. I'm going to reserve 9-12 every weekday for writing. This will only last while school is on, but that gives me about five weeks or so.

This time of year, it’s easy to be distracted. Yesterday, I ended up leaving early and walking around town to do errands (it was sunny and in the 80s). There are always dishes to wash, stuff to pick up, library books to return, bank visits, e-mails, etc..

But I need to just drop all of those things at 9am. Leave them where they’re at, and get to my desk and get to work. Clear off all the junk and papers into a milk crate that I keep under the desk. It fills up. Stuff doesn’t get done. Oh, well.

I’m also going to try VERY hard not to check my e-mail for those three hours. I normally prefer to check my e-mail about every two minutes. Need to close down the e-mail program and keep it closed.

I’m lucky to have the time in my life to write at the moment, but it’s amazing how fast it gets eaten up. Vigilance and discipline are key.

It seems simple, but it’ll be tough. I’ve tried a million schemes to get more work out of my time. Sometimes they work great (the playwright submission binge succeeded for me and a bunch of other people) and often they die quick, silent deaths (didn’t I say just two weeks ago that I was going to spend an hour a day marketing Tornado Siren and another hour a day marketing my screenplays? What happened to that fine plan?)

I hope this one will work. It's not far from what I've been doing, but I've been a little too loose lately.

Once school is over, I’ll need a new plan. I’m already scheming.