Day Planner

I think a big part of the American dream is about having the freedom to be your own boss and do things the way you would choose to do them. It always has been that way for me anyway. But there's an inherent problem with that: you actually have to be self-motivated.

I'm ashamed to say my motivation often times is that of an 8-year old. When I have to force myself to get out of bed, it's usually to avoid getting into trouble with work. I am by no means a morning person in any sense of the word, so I'm happy to say I work nights. This is great for my job but bad for anything else I would want to do. You see, working nights means I don't have to schedule my waking around the need to get up and go to work. Working nights means I can sleep in, and the lack of "getting in trouble for being late to work" is no longer there.

On the surface, this sounds great, but it means that by sleeping in, I sacrifice the time surrounding work that I could use to be productive. When I work days, it means I get up, go to work, come home, and have the rest of my conscious evening to take care of business. It's more structured and productive even though I hate dayshift.

I'm afraid that my own personal endeavors have not been enough to drag me out of a completely comfortable bed in the morning when I don't absolutely HAVE to get up.

So in other words, I need to grow up.

I realized a lot about myself this past year and I've made a number of resolutions to better myself as a Christian, an artist, a husband and as a man overall. I think in order to make them work, I'm going to have to have a more regimented schedule myself if I continue to work nights. They say if you don't have a plan, you're planning to fail. So I suppose I need to be even more thorough in my outline of daily details.

Step by step, I'm tweaking the things that keep me from taking care of business. I think I've got my attitude and mindset hammered out, so now, I guess I need a schedule.