It’s About Time—The [Actual] Hard Choices, part 2

Go Back to Part 1

So Rhap­sody is bet­ter. I’m not in the mid­dle of a med­ical cri­sis. And copy of The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol is miss­ing. Clear­ly, it’s time to get back to writ­ing. How­ev­er, that turns out to be a lot hard­er because of all this oth­er stuff that has clut­tered up my sched­ule in the mean­time. I did­n’t just have five emp­ty hours a day wait­ing for me like “Insert Writ­ing Here.” I have to go and get rid of things to make room for it, sweep­ing my cal­en­dar clear like it’s a desk of bills and I’m Steve Mar­tin in The Jerk.

What? Too ’70s for you? My 46-year-old ref­er­ences aren’t “hip” enough for you? 

Well any­way, I sat down with my pri­or­i­ties and my cal­en­dar and I made some real­ly hard choic­es. 

The 7–10 Split (Find­ing Four to Five Hours a Day—Not Twelve)

First let me start by say­ing my days will be short­er now. I’m not try­ing to find 8–16 hours a day to write. Even my over­achiev­er ass was hav­ing trou­ble with that. The vor­tex of writ­ing nois­i­ly slurped up every­thing and swal­lowed it down….uh….but not in the fun way. Noisy fun slurp­ing would be so much bet­ter.

I’m in a very dif­fer­ent place than I was five years ago. That place is Con­cord. Which is noth­ing like Rich­mond. (Haha, lit­tle Bay Area humor there.) 

Okay but real­ly though. Can­cer. Mis­car­riages. Death (not mine). These things make you look at life a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. Even before I met Rhap­sody, I was start­ing to real­ize that I could pay the bills writ­ing only if I had absolute­ly no work/life bal­ance and my “innie” worked twelve‑, fourteen‑, or even six­teen-hour days. Some­times I would wake up, wan­der down­stairs and spend a whole day on an arti­cle with­out ever chang­ing out of my paja­mas. It was high pres­sure and low reward.

I tech­ni­cal­ly made ends meet, but only tech­ni­cal­ly. There was an AWFUL lot of extra mon­ey watch­ing The Con­trar­i­an that paid for brand-name peanut but­ter and Pra­da paper­clips.

True sto­ry: I end­ed up in Urgent Care after a series of sleep­walk­ing inci­dents and the doc­tor got about five ques­tions in before it was obvi­ous even to me that I need­ed more rest, more sleep, and less stress. I actu­al­ly got told I was going to get heart dis­ease and die ear­ly if I did­n’t learn to chill the fuck out. Now I pay atten­tion to my sleep hygiene so I don’t wake up binge-watch­ing Iron Fist Sea­son 2 (~shud­der~).

But some­thing fun­ny hap­pened when I forced a work/life balance—particularly one that involved a lit­tle bit of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. You would think the less I wrote, the less I would get writ­ten, but that’s not how it shook out. I start­ed to notice that I could do the same amount of writ­ing in less time. Give me six­teen hours, and I’d fin­ish up around 15:55. Give me twelve hours, I’d fin­ish up around 11:55. Give me six hours, and I’d fin­ish up around 5:55.

I mean EVENTUALLY I would run out of time before I fin­ished. I can’t write a five-hun­dred-page nov­el in an after­noon just because there’s a stop­watch tick­ing off the sec­onds. But my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty almost always involved absolute­ly exact­ly as much pro­cras­ti­na­tion as the job could han­dle, whether that was five hours or five days. 

Not only that, but my head felt clear­er after a good walk and between that and the way the small­er con­tain­er of a dead­line “put a lid on the pot” I was able to get a lot more done in a lot less time. After about four hours, I reached a point of dimin­ish­ing returns. (Or, to be more accu­rate to my ADHD ass, it was only under dead­line with four hours REMAINING that I achieved a point of max­i­mum increas­ing returns.) So I start­ed try­ing to exer­cise more and more and even took up run­ning. 

Then I fell in love, moved, had a mis­car­riage (well, Rhap­sody did) and got can­cer, my liv­er blew up, Rhap­sody’s boss was killed in a rob­bery, we got evict­ed by a land­lord who want­ed to flip the house we were in but not pay a relo­ca­tion fee, and then chron­ic pain struck DURING the move and did­n’t go away until surgery. Good times.

After can­cer, I decid­ed I want­ed a whole new thing. Not a change from writing—I still want to write—an addi­tion. An “equal part­ner” in my career. A yin to my yang. A Bert to my Ernie. A don­key to my Shrek. A Chew­bac­ca to my… okay, you get the point. I still want to write, but I want­ed to stop liv­ing my finan­cial life so close to the edge (even though I was tech­ni­cal­ly “mak­ing it”), and I want­ed a sec­ond job (not a side gig, but a full 50%, half-and-half job) that was as FAR AWAY from sit­ting in a chair as I could pos­si­bly get.

I also had some oth­er guid­ance and direc­tion that I speak of in my oth­er blog. My call­ing to serve The Mor­ri­g­an became clear­er, and one of the things I was called to do was cre­ate a con­tain­er from which I could do the work of being a priest. Every­thing from train­ing as a death doula to con­tin­u­ing to be a loud and obnox­ious writer to mar­tial arts. One of those things was to help peo­ple find fit­ness (and try to make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, but I’ll get into that else­where). So I went back to school, got a Cer­ti­fied Per­son­al Train­er cer­tifi­cate, took my NASM test, and took on clients.

So now I spend time work­ing out and teach­ing oth­ers to work out. I write MUCH faster in a lot less time. I still need to find time to work, but I only need to find FOUR HOURS.

Will I write a lit­tle less? Prob­a­bly. 

Will I be hap­pi­er and more well bal­anced. Almost cer­tain­ly.

Will I binge watch Sea­son Two of Iron Fist ever again? Abso­fuck­ing­lute­ly not.

Easy Changes

The first round of changes was­n’t real­ly going to be much effort. They just took a lit­tle recal­i­bra­tion. I spent a long time with a lot of buffer time between activ­i­ties just because you nev­er knew when plans were going to explode and a day was going to take a sharp right turn into Whatthe­fuck­ersville. By eight in the morn­ing, a day of class­es and work could turn into stay­ing home to nurse Rhap­sody through a pan­ic attack, a hand­hold to the doc­tor, or a step-up to take care of the kids because the pain was just too great.

I spent tons of time on friv­o­lous phone games and time wasters just try­ing to reg­u­late my ner­vous sys­tem from the last pan­ic or cri­sis and keep myself from get­ting too deep into any­thing before the next one cropped up.

But Rhap­sody had surgery and is feel­ing much bet­ter. Last week­end she danced all night and then woke up and walked around the neigh­bor­hood for three hours. The grief has fad­ed to a dull ache. She is a lit­tle wor­ried about what’s next since it’s been four years of need­ing to get through [the next thing] in order to sur­vive, but these are like the back­ground radi­a­tion of gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety, and not a spe­cial ver­sion of pain or grief.

And my own ner­vous sys­tem’s response to that unre­lent­ing cou­ple of years is start­ing to calm. I don’t need an hour to wake up in the morn­ing just so I can face the day. I don’t need to keep the after­noon open any longer because I might need 90 min­utes in the mid­dle to do school pick up. I don’t need to be “on call,” and that means I don’t need to be play­ing phone games for hours or just giv­ing my fourth rewatch of Super­nat­ur­al a thou­sand-yard stare. My trau­ma response isn’t hair trig­ger, ever ready for anoth­er sev­er­al hours of being in a sup­port role and then a cou­ple more of reg­u­lat­ing myself.

The prob­lem is that I did this for years. If it was­n’t one thing, it was anoth­er. Adap­ta­tions turned into habits. And habits turned into lifestyle. Even­tu­al­ly you stop try­ing to jump right back on the horse because what is the point? So now, after years of tak­ing it slow because it might blow up, I’m used to mov­ing at snail pace, and it’s hard to hit the ground run­ning. I have to make a con­scious effort to crack my over­cau­tious cadence open and undo it all for a lit­tle bit of focus and urgency. But if I can tight­en things up again, I’ll gain a lot of time in moments here and there just by being a lit­tle more dis­ci­plined about how I use my time, a lit­tle more deter­mined to get some work done, and less dis­tractible by things I need­ed for the last few years to calm me. 

Esti­mat­ed time gain: 3–4 hours/week

Tougher Changes

So once the easy changes were iden­ti­fied, it was time to real­ly get to work. When a sched­ule is bleed­ing, there are usu­al­ly two rea­sons for it. 1) You’re spend­ing time on things that aren’t a pri­or­i­ty. 2) You have no idea how much time you’re spend­ing on anything—priority or not.

In my case, both these things were true. 

So step one was to track where my time was going and step two was to make a list of pri­or­i­ties. These are MY pri­or­i­ties. Yours might be dif­fer­ent, include more fam­i­ly time, include more down­time… what­ev­er.

Priorities

• Fam­i­ly
• The Mor­ri­g­an Priest Duties*
• Writ­ing (Job #1)
• Cer­ti­fied Per­son­al Train­ing (Job #2)
• My Own Phys­i­cal Fit­ness
• UU Church (Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice)
• Fur­ther Mor­ri­g­an Priest Skills (Death Doula, Mar­tial Arts, Tarot, Irish, Fid­dle)
• Per­son­al Leisure Time

(*A lot of The Mor­ri­g­an Priest Duties are dou­ble dips with oth­er things. I can write a social jus­tice arti­cle and it’s priest work and writ­ing, for exam­ple. [The Mor­ri­g­an is big on social jus­tice.] Or when I go to the Uni­tar­i­an Uni­ver­sal­ist Church, it is because the pagan community—even here in the very woo-woo, alter­na­tive Bay Area—is pret­ty scat­tered, dis­or­ga­nized, and large­ly into their own thing rather than com­mu­ni­ty, so it is the com­pro­mise I have made to find a com­mu­ni­ty of like-mind­ed, mul­ti-denom­i­na­tion­al, queer-friend­ly, left­ist-activist folks to be of ser­vice to AS a priest while I begin the work of decades build­ing some­thing local and inten­tion­al.)

What comb­ing through my cal­en­dar this care­ful­ly meant was that I need­ed to make sure my time reflect­ed my pri­or­i­ties. Not just a mat­ter of not wast­ing time, but was I spend­ing a lot of time on some­thing far down the list from high­er pri­or­i­ties that were get­ting neglect­ed? Here are a cou­ple of exam­ples:

1‑My ser­vice to my com­mu­ni­ty through the UU Church is impor­tant to me, but if I sign up for every march, vig­il, sit in, “know your rights” class, vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ty, food dis­tri­b­u­tion across their LGBTQ+, POC, and help-for-the-unhoused activism, I would be doing that a cou­ple of hours a day and three to five hours each day on week­ends. That’s won­der­ful, but I have oth­er things I want to be doing as much and some­times more than church activism, so I need to spread those things out and go to one or two a week instead of every one I get an email about. I want to go, be seen as reli­able, learn to orga­nize, and also do a lot of oth­er things too.

2- I want to run real­ly long distances—half and full marathons—but I’m going to have to give those up. They take months of train­ing and involve more and more hours of run­ning and cross-train­ing every week until they eat 10–15 hours a week of time. I had to make the tough choice that the time invest­ments for me to run those kinds of races were going to take too much time away from things I want to do more. I’ll stick to 5k’s, 5 miles, and the occa­sion­al long run of 8–10 miles and set my goals with­in that con­tain­er. Maybe some­day I can push for longer dis­tances.

There are a half a dozen or so more choic­es that were like this—they’re activ­i­ties I want to do but that are clear­ly down the pri­or­i­ty scale. Now that I’m writ­ing, SOMETHING has to get bumped, and if I’m not delib­er­ate about what it is, I’ll end up scratch­ing my head at where the time has gone.

Esti­mat­ed time gain: 1–2 hours/day

The Really REALLY Hard Choices

So that left noth­ing but real­ly hard choic­es.

And I mean REALLY hard choic­es. 

Up till now was Kir­by’s Dream Land and now we were on to Dark Souls.

Things I want­ed to do held up against oth­er things I also want­ed to do…and one of them HAD to go. The stuff that stings to admit you’re not in a place to do. The stuff that HURTS to give up. It’s not enough to say, “Hey I want to be a writer more than a death doula, so that train­ing will have to wait until I have a lit­tle more free time.” No, that’s child’s play com­pared to this shit. These are choic­es that require a care­ful exam­i­na­tion of my pri­or­i­ties and the most strate­gic way to serve them, and the grudg­ing admis­sion that I can’t do every­thing I want to do. That required just acknowl­edg­ing that my time was going towards low­er pri­or­i­ty shit. This requires strat­e­gy and plan­ning.

For exam­ple, I want­ed to stay in school. There are more fit­ness cer­tifi­cates I want to get to be the best cer­ti­fied per­son train­er I can be, and I may want to get a nutri­tion cer­tifi­cate as well. Even­tu­al­ly I want to open my own com­mu­ni­ty out­reach gym/martial arts stu­dio/­woo-woo cen­ter that is acces­si­ble to low­er- income folks, and I can imag­ine an asso­ciates in kine­si­ol­o­gy will help immea­sur­ably with that. I like the rou­tine that class­es bring to a week. I even just like BEING a stu­dent. Tak­ing my work to the library or cafe­te­ria and work­ing in a change of envi­ron­ment. But right now, that’s just six hours a week I don’t have. I’ve got the cer­tifi­cate I need to take on clients and make mon­ey RIGHT NOW. So school isn’t urgent com­pared to oth­er things I want to do. 

And I had to admit that right now was not a good time for high-inten­si­ty dat­ing. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I have the TIME to date. But it’s not just a mat­ter of holes in the cal­en­dar where dates could go. There’s so much ener­gy expend­ed in capital‑R Rela­tion­ships™. Par­tic­u­lar­ly as you start to get past the “what­ev­er’s offered” stage and talk about what each of you wants. That hypo­thet­i­cal per­son would have to slide effort­less­ly into my life (local [but tru­ly], kitchen table, expe­ri­enced at non-monogamy, etc.), and I’m feel­ing pret­ty picky right now. I don’t need a rela­tion­ship to feel full and con­tent. So while I’m tech­ni­cal­ly open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty, I have a lot of oth­er things that are pulling my focus right now. Any­way, it’s not like I would­n’t bang half my friends if they want­ed to. That’s a lot less emo­tion­al invest­ment, is still pret­ty fun, and fits my life bet­ter at the moment.

Drop­ping school (for now at least) and giv­ing up dat­ing (for now at least) are huge. They’re both things I real­ly want to be doing, but they need to be sac­ri­ficed if I’m going to get back to writ­ing. They put a lot of time back on my sched­ule.

Esti­mat­ed time gain: 10–15 hours/week

The Final Answer

I end­ed up with at least three hours every day and big chunks of time on Thurs­day and Fri­day. Week­ends are con­fig­urable but now include enough time to get some writ­ing done. My Mon­day-Wednes­day are going to be a lit­tle light in the writ­ing depart­ment. I’ll need to make sure my big arti­cles are get­ting writ­ten between Thurs­day and Sun­day.

It was­n’t easy, but writ­ing is worth it. And if you are try­ing to make writ­ing The Thing You Do™–or even just An Impor­tant Thing You Do™, at some point….eventually…you’re going to have to do some­thing LIKE this. We all have to check in once in a while and see if our pri­or­i­ties match up with our activ­i­ties. I can’t tell you what YOU will give up and what you will keep, but maybe my process can help you stream­line the things that are not pri­or­i­ties in your life. Most things in world out there are lit­er­al­ly made to be just a lit­tle too addic­tive and creep in with­out you notic­ing.

But writ­ing is worth the effort.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.