I’m back in school. Crazy.
Over the next eight weeks I will be trying to finish up my course load, do a handful of high school visits as part of my regularly scheduled work, revise a crapshow of a novel (I have a solid path forward now), and take MFA courses. This is a lot for me to do and to deal with right now, and the Lady Talis fears it wil be overwhelming. Valid. However, I feel it will lock me in. I feel it will drive me forward as a writer and as an organized person. There are things in my life that I have to get right. Love, health, parenting, writing, finance. These things need to get right in that order. I’d add that I need to be much better at being part of a family (love/parenting) and reaching out to those I care about. I’ve been a taker and a lazy person my entire life. That life is at least half over. It is long past the time I started giving back and being the person that my wife and kids can look to as a positive example.
I’m going to take on these next eight weeks as a personal challenge to see what I am made of and see what I am capable of accomplishing. I am going to work my butt off to be better in every phase of my life. The first step to that is eliminating senseless wastes of time. I can be more efficient. I can definitely play less Pokemon and refocus that and other wasted time on completing the tasks I care about. How do I decompress then? I’ll still take time to play a game (that I care about) and watch shows I enjoy. I’ll do less of that on my own and enjoy it more as a moment I do with family to be sure.
There are simple moments I can take advantage of–swapping out Pokemon for responding to discussion boards at the grad level and grading low hanging assignments at the instructor level is one avenue. Spending less of my mental energy giving a damn about the treatment and behaviors of my kids that I cannot directly control is another. No need whatsoever for those ruminations.
Growth is hard and slow. I am making progress as a person every day. I want to see who I am at 51. I’m trying to make him an absolute bad ass.