One of the things I want to get better at doing is reviewing each calendar year.<\/p>\n
1. I\u2019ve always been bad at doing any sort of review in a systematic way. Think about how bad I was at keeping my files updated back in school. And how I\u2019ve never really managed to stick to any sort of deliberate system or habit for longer than a few months. I\u2019m trying to change that now. I feel like I\u2019ve been trying to change this for the past 6-8 years. What am I going to do now moving forward that\u2019s going to make a difference?<\/p>\n
1b. I think the answer is that I\u2019m going to change my attitude towards the importance of a daily calendar review. The costs are too high now for me to let it go. I\u2019m approaching my 4th year of marriage, of being a home-owner, of being employed. I can no longer approach it like a beginner, like a novice. There are expectations I have to live up to, especially my own.<\/p>\n
2. I was doing a calendar review yesterday (I know it because I put it in my calendar). I went to the start of 2016, and then scanned through my days week by weeks. I didn\u2019t always keep great records \u2013 sometimes I\u2019d have weeks at a time where I didn\u2019t fill in anything, and can\u2019t exactly be sure of what I did. <\/p>\n
2a. A part of me wants to be okay with that, as a sort of resistance to the colonization of time. But the bigger part of me I think wants to see what it\u2019s like when I really take my own time seriously. After all, I can always revert to living a life of indifference to time. I do remember that there was a period of time in my life where I basically just hung out with friends every day, and I didn\u2019t enjoy that at all. I found myself weary, listless, and it was just not a good vibe. <\/p>\n
2b. It\u2019s also a little shocking how short a year really is. It seems like a long stretch of time when it\u2019s laid out in front of you. But you\u2019re going to spend a third of it asleep. You\u2019re going to spend large chunks of it eating, showering, using the toilet, walking from place to place, and so on. The reality of it seems to be that after everything else, I only have a couple of hours \u2013 maybe up to 4 hours \u2013 that I can reliably count on to be productive with. And when I look at my calendar, I see that I wasn\u2019t nearly as productive as I wish I was. And I don\u2019t even think I was as productive as I assumed I\u2019d be. That\u2019s the scary part.<\/p>\n
3. I spend a lot more time on Facebook or randomly surfing the internet \u2013 reddit and so on \u2013 than I realize. I went cold turkey on this back in 2013, which was good for a while, but it\u2019s slowly crept back onto me. A part of me does think that I want to build relationships with people on Facebook for my long-term writing career, but I need to be very precise about what exactly I\u2019m trying to achieve with that \u2013 because otherwise it\u2019s sickeningly easy to fall into the trap of just hanging out in the common room all day. (Which was what I did when I was in Junior College.)<\/p>\n
4. I was talking to a friend over a beer and talked about how we\u2019re going to be turning 27. Lots of the celebrities that we looked up to \u2013 Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, etc \u2013 they never made it to 28. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. All of them crashed and burned one way or another. And it looks like we\u2019re probably going to make it to 28. <\/p>\n
4b. I just thought that was interesting, because making it to old age in a healthy and functional way, I think, requires effort. And we\u2019re crossing a threshold now, and once we\u2019ve crossed it we really have to shed our old skins. We have to reimagine ourselves as entirely different people, in a new stage of life, reborn.<\/p>\n
5. All this calendar talk is really about me circling around the idea that I don\u2019t want to waste any more time. I don\u2019t want to allow forces beyond my control to dictate how I spend my time \u2013 or if that\u2019s inevitable to some degree, well at least I want to minimize the amount of time that is taken from me. Life is so short. It passes so fast. I can\u2019t believe 4 years have already gone. It almost seemed to have vanished in the haze. It went by while I was trying to keep up and trying to get by. I feel like I \u201cdeserve\u201d at least a decade where I feel well-adjusted and happy and in control of my domain. Of course, nobody \u201cdeserves\u201d anything. Life will bitch-smack you in the face if it feels inclined to. <\/p>\n
6. Another thing I\u2019m trying to tie up here is the importance of ruthless prioritization, which I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve written about before. I usually write myself into a frenzy to try and get myself into the right mood for agreeing that prioritization is important, but I rarely follow up with what I think is actually most important, and then eliminate everything else accordingly.<\/p>\n
7. Well, for the remaining two years I\u2019m going to make it a point that my word vomits are my single top priority. I\u2019m going to have to write at least one every single day. I need to cross 650 by the end of the year, ideally I\u2019d like to cross 700. I know it\u2019s possible. I just need to make it a priority. I need to do it early in the day so I get it out of my system, before I do anything else. My 2nd priority would be fitness. I need to get healthier now while I\u2019m still young. More on that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things I want to get better at doing is reviewing each calendar year. 1. I\u2019ve always been bad at doing any sort of review in a systematic way. Think about how bad I was at keeping my files updated back in school. And how I\u2019ve never really… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[338],"class_list":["post-10284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-review-your-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\n