Time, time, time, see what’s become of me

I had a great birthday yesterday: Sat outside, read, watched a movie, received an Amazon gift card from my future mother in law (thanks again!) and TYG took me to dinner and a movie (the charmingly whimsical Cedar Rapids). Astonishingly, I did not do any extra writing as I thought I’d might, but I did devote some thought to my schedule and my plans.
Life is good, certainly: I’m preparing to marry my dream woman, I’m full-time freelancing, but I would like to be working at a higher level this time next year (more pay, more challenging assignments, etc.—on the romantic side, there’s no way I could do better.).
But as I struggled with turning that into an action plan, I realized I didn’t want to. My 101 in 1001 provides all the goal-setting I need; end of the year, I might want to adjust things or tinker, but not yet.
What I want, instead, is to focus on the year I’m having, not the year ahead. Like I said, life is pretty wonderful for me—instead of being more goal-centered, I think I should be more activity-centered. Enjoying what I’m doing and the way life is turning out instead of focusing down the road; not that I’ll take my eye off the long game, but it’s too easy for me to focus on that and lose sight of the current moment.
I do think that tinkering with my schedule a little will help with that. Writing freelance, particularly when I had a day job, requires tight time-management, and I’m prone to overdo that, to the point I actually have trouble dealing with unstructured time. And because there’s always something I could be writing or doing, it’s easy for me to feel guilty if I have an evening free, even if I’m not behind or under a deadline.
So I’m going to try tightening my schedule more and see if that won’t free me up. On the weekend, set a time for when I have tasks (like figuring my state income tax today) and then I can relax the rest of the time knowing I’m not slacking off—when the time comes, I’ll handle the job, no need to worry against them.
And while I still want to avoid evening work—it’s so much more fun if I can focus on TYG while she’s home—I’m going to try planning in advance when I know I’ve got to spend time during the workday running errands. I think if I see it in my calendar, that will work much better than just muttering to myself “Well, I really ought to make up that lost hour …”
I feel quite optimistic about this—certainly my chores for today went pretty smoothly and now that they’re almost done (a little cooking yet remains) I feel free to enjoy myself.
As for the rest of the week:
•I read Number of the Least and Tale Spinners to my writing group and they liked both. They’ll be ready to go by next month, for certain.
•I think I finally fixed the story problems in Salad Days, though it really needs a new title.
•I didn’t get any writing done on Brain From Outer Space but I did start going over the chapters of the latest draft—not to do any major changes, but to make sure that the timeline holds together and that I followed up on the new scenes I added (and sure enough, there’s one that needs addressing).
And that’s my birthday week. All in all, I’m pretty pleased, and looking forward to the next 12 months.