School is in session and the sports that go with school are in session. This means it is time for a new schedule! I am presently struggling with the construction of that schedule, because I don’t entirely know what I am teaching. I know what my kids have going on. I know what my partner has going on. I have a vague (yet functional) sense of what I have going on, but there are several holes. Call it a swiss cheese schedule. Like the dairy product it does provide my day with inexplicable gaps. In some of these gaps I intend to place good writing hours. I need them. I am in the midsts of a solid production schedule, though the writing itself is tough going. I am going to need to be able to look at a calendar on a daily basis and say, “This is when I write.” I need that in order to be successful–especially as I ramp up for another novel.
So, what does ‘Writing Time’ need to look like? For me it is a block of time no less than two hours and hopefully pushing 4. I rarely have the luxury of four, so I need to think about how to become more focus in bursts of two. I also need to think about how to balance that with the rest of the important work stuff like being a teacher. There are enough hours in the day. It stands to reason that those hours may need to involve fewer video games.
Some Thoughts:
- I am going to need to start treating my obsession with youth football like a drug addiction. I cannot go too many days without thinking about it and every time I do think about it and the draw of that life (specifically the competitiveness of the situation and being able to see immediate results based on specific teaching styles and planning) I find myself wondering what it was I left unfinished. I believe that unfinished job is the construction of the perfect system–from top to bottom. What does it look like to craft a system that works? I built a playbook that works but I never built a practice and planning system to teach it and the core fundamentals around it. I left that one behind. So, once again, this addiction is really about accepting the things I cannot accomplish in my life.