Time is my. It is always my enemy. I battle and war against it every single day trying to meet deadlines and cram each valuable minute with as much productive work as possible some of which includes writing. I started this year with good intentions and I still intend to finish well, but darn it, I'm going to have to fight for every second of writing time.
Things that are demanding my time
- My job – I know, I know. Lots of people have demanding jobs and still manage to make the writer thing work. I fully intend to be one of those people, but for the last six months my job has been intruding on my writing time more than I'm comfortable with. Not complaining, my job is challenging and there are a lot of positives about it. I just wish that it would restrict itself to nine or ten hours a day instead of the twelve or thirteen it has been taking lately
- Non-writing friends – You know, I love my non-writing friends. They keep me connected with the rest of the world, but darn it, they seem to think that I should spend time with them. Time that could be used to write.
- Family – This one could be worse. I'm not married nor do I have kids. Still, family is family and my parents want to visit. They have expectations and needs that I must meet or attempt to meet. Yes, I know I'm an adult and I need to get over this, but I haven't managed to do that yet. Maybe, this year.
- Cleaning – Ok, I've given up on this one for the most part, but when the lack of cleaning becomes something that the health department would frown on, you just have to do it. My house is currently at that point. So cleaning is in my near future.
- Exercise/Being healthy – Exercise is good for you, but like everything else, it is a time suck. I know that I need to exercise. I know that I need to eat correctly. It is still a time suck.
Sigh….There has to be a way to balance all these things. There just has to. I must find it I've built a very careful schedule for the year. I've included catchup days and given myself relatively modest daily writing goals because I know that I'm busy, but somehow I can't seem to even find time to meet those goals.
So, I'm curious how do you do it? How do you balance your life and your writing?
2 comments:
I don't. Last night, I worked an hour overtime at the DJ after clocking out so I could research software options. Necessary, but on my time. I gave the requisite hour to the hubby for dinner and tv time, and then I rolled right into my writing time. When bedtime rolled around, I still hadn't approached anything on the to do list (laundry from the two-week Christmas/New Years/Wedding trip, budgeting for January, account balancing from December, tracking down my exercise dvds which were tossed in a Stash & Dash box during one cleaning spree or another so that I could then exercise for whatever was left of the hour, those kinds of things).
But I did get through some good edits until my eyes got blurry and demanded sleep.
Balance, you'll note, is not one of the things I learned last year either. Maybe I can get on that path in 2010.
Your post speaks to my frustration as well. :)
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