Goals and Priorities and Other Concepts That Are Hard

I've experienced a lot of goal accomplishments lately. I graduated nursing school, landed a dream job in a down economy, moved to a new city (a new country, some might say) and started working out (four months solid - some kind of record for me). Additionally I'm eating  better, sleeping like a brick (a log? Wait, no...a baby?), and there's about ten phrases I can say in Spanish, and my patients actually understand me (Voy a ser su enfermera; esto es medicina para dolor; tiene nausea?).

And then there's my writing goals, what were they again? Oh yes, I have none. I've set none. I've met none. I sound like Dr. Seuss. And setting goals from scratch is tricky because you really have to believe in them, have confidence that they are attainable and reasonable and mostly that they are going to get you where you want to go. And when you have a lot of goals, you have to line them up according to priorities. Goals and priorities; this is the kind of boring grown up jargon that does not get the creative juices flowing.

Recently my good writer friend and superb manager Ditty had an excellent post about priorities, and how everything feels like a priority most of the time. It feels like it, because it is. Work, relationships, physical fitness, nutrition, creativity, spirituality, all are priorities. Rather than rank them as highest to lowest, I prefer to put them all on the same shelf, right next to each other, because each one effects the others. If my social life is looking dim, my work will feel more like a drudge. And if my most important relationships aren't being maintained, there's no head space for creative thoughts.

The key here, I'll speculate, is the idea that not all of these things need be given the same amount of time to classify them as equal priorities. Working out is a priority that may take five to six hours a week, whereas my day job as a priority will cost 36-40 hours. Hanging out with friends, maybe four hours a week; quality time with husband, like ten hours. Writing, according to the GITS method, will set you back approximately (very approximately) 24 hours a week. Sleep, hopefully, will take up roughly 45-50 hours. Let's add:

6 hours working out
40 hours of work
4 hours with friends
10 hours with husband
24 hours writing, reading screenplays, watching films and other writerly things
45 hours for sleep.

That's...(calculator in use)...129 hours a week. Being that there are 168 hours in a single week, that leaves us with 39 hours to blow on whatever we want. A lot of this time will probably be getting ready to do these activities. It takes about 45 minutes, all in all, to get ready for work, a good hour if I'm hanging with friends or even leaving the house for any reason. Commuting is a factor as well, not just commuting to work but to workouts and hangouts and such. Phone calls and texts should be factored in as well, since those tend to stop us dead in our tracks for a miscellaneous amount of time. I haven't even thought about television. Currently, I don't own a TV but I still find myself spending about five hours a week watching it (thank you, Hulu). Then there's time you just spend spacing out. Like I just did, for like five minutes. Four hours a week for friends? Is that a fair estimate, because suddenly it seems like I must be a terrible friend.

Let's bring this back to some kind of basics here. We've got this time, and some of that time we have to work, and other times we have other crap to do, but those hours we know are going to be free, as in nothing is expected of us at certain times and locations, we could take advantage of by setting our own expectations at our own times and locations. The Bakery, 10 a.m., with laptop. Write. Eat. Write. Read. Write.

Done.





    

Not Dead Yet

Sounds like a good zombie movie title (getting tired of those yet?), but in actuality I'm speaking of my writing life. So elusive, that. An oft sacrificed part of me lately, I will not let it die. Today, for the first time in months, I looked at some writing stuff. Went to Script Shadow, pulled up my scene-by-scene breakdown of that alien comedy I started two years ago (it's terrible. Just awful). Back. In. The. Saddle!

When you haven't really written in a long time, it's so hard to just jump back in. It's like exercising for the first time in two years - you're like "yeah, I know it's a good idea but look at me; it's going to take months for these spandex yoga pants to stop looking as if they're just sausage casings." And you have to keep showing up to the gym, your giggly parts flopping all over the place, everybody else knowing just by looking at you that this is not your thing. It's embarrassing.

But if you keep doing it, things start to change. You start looking better, feeling better, ultimately your entire life could change as a result of all this hard work. That's writing. You have to stop thinking about doing it, and just sit down, open your laptop and hammer out the worst dribble you've ever seen put down into actual words. I mean, just terrible terrible stuff.

But if you keep doing it...

If you're like me, and you find yourself unable to just let it go; if you keep coming back to this whole writing thing, then there's got to be something to that. It may be that the only difference between a phenomenal writer and a poor writer is strictly numbers. Minutes, hours, days, weeks. Numbers. Do the work, and see what happens. Just keep doing it.