The List

Introduction

I went camping this weekend. I went with Anh, and he'd never gone before. It was kind of a rollercoaster.

I asked him because I wanted to go camping. I wanted to do all the camping things, and if anything terrible happened, I told myself it wouldn't matter—I'd have a good time.

I don't know why complaining bothers me; I know I do it too, but when other people do it when I'm trying to make an effort to have fun, it bothers me.

I'm having a tough time mentally. I told the new Doctor that. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know where it's going or who will be there. I want to feel like everything will be alright, but I don't always. I just smoked some old weed I bought when I first moved to Colorado.

I remember telling the cashier at the dispensary that I needed it for school, to study. Not a complete lie, okay, maybe a complete lie. It doesn't help me with school, and I don't even use it when I have homework or am concerned about finishing it. I'll smoke it after completing assignments, and I'll smoke it if I'm with someone else who smokes. I'm defending it. It's led to me writing now in a weird way. I have all of these tools that I wanted to eventually help me do things like writing and creating my own things, and it sucks that I don't use them. I have what it takes to be a good writer. I'm holding myself back. I'm afraid of failure and have been acting like one for so long. I think I can only change that by dedicating all of my time to this thing. All of my time means time away from my actual job, my educational pursuits, my desire to constantly try something new, my family, and being happy. I can be satisfied while writing. I think it's cool, just like psychology is cool or whatever else. This could be the one cool thing I do. This could be the only thing that I do.

I would do this, and I would do all of the other natural things that humans have to do. That means I would eat, sleep shit, take care of Shakespeare, work a job, finish school, clean and manage the apartment, and write. I'm worried, thinking "where, and what –" These automatic negative thoughts. But they probably don't have any evidence proving they're true. That's what therapy has taught me. So let's use it. Let's use your creativity and stupidity to write.

Let's at least try it out. It could fail, get bored, or miss an old hobby. I could get sick and die. So I need to take care of myself to the list of responsibilities outside of writing. And hey, most people or the people who matter will support me in this anyway. And they'll do it because they've proven they can do it. I trust them. I love them. So this brings me to who I'm dedicating this to— me.

It was funny initially, but I wanted to do something for myself. This would be taking care of myself. Doing something for me.

When am I going to have time to read?

I'll have to schedule things now.

Writing will be everything else.

I should have some consistency. It'll make things repeatable. And I want writing to be repeatable. Will changing my schedule or routine, or lifestyle stress me out? I don't want it to, but if I'm consistent, I will adapt to it and be better for the stress I've faced. So I should expect to be stressed out at first, and things will sort of die down while I get accustomed to the groove. If this was all orchestrated by someone and I'm now some writing puppet for a big corporation that doesn't pay me what I would like it to, I think I'll be okay as long as I'm writing. The neighbor's music stopped. Coincidences in life are common, and I should plan for those, too, lest I succumb to being paranoid about those coincidences.

Planning

There are 24 hours times 7 days a week, which equals 168 hours total. I'll need 63 hours a week dedicated to sleep. Since I work 8am-4pm, I'll need 40 hours devoted to my job. This doesn't include times when clients call out, or I'm sick. I don't know how I would account for that time. 6 hours dedicated to reading/reviewing course material related to the 6 hours it takes to complete assignments, x amount of time dedicated to revising and editing my writing, 7 hours of cleaning and hygiene, 10 hours of eating, and 4 hours of exercise. That's 133 hours plus the x amount of time dedicated to revising and editing, plus time writing must equal 168. If I divide revising and editing time by 2 (adjust where I need to), I have 17.5 hours a week, 2 and a half hours of writing a day, and 2 and half hours revising and editing. 5 hours a day, getting my thoughts on paper.