According to my time intentioning schedule, I have an hour to write and post this blog. But according to that schedule, I got up at 5am, read, wrote, did yoga, went for a walk, and wrote again. In reality, I got up at 4:30am, shopped Amazon, drank coffee, talked to the fam, drove one kid to school at 8, and contemplated Starbucks on the way home.

It’s now 10am

To be fair, I did spend from 9 to 10 researching and creating a presentation I am giving tomorrow about Benjamin Franklin and time management.

HA!

Is it ironic or appropriate? Sometimes I don’t know.

I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog if I had not worked on that project when I was scheduled to be writing this blog. And since my 8-11am block is technically reserved for work-related activities, the presentation counts. But as I was working on said slidedeck, I didn’t think it counted because I wasn’t writing….

I create routines & rituals that free time and ease conflict.

This is one of the things I say I do. I say I do a lot of things.

I bring what’s hidden to light.

I connect people to words that connect them to themselves. 

I help you find what you thought you’d lost or what you did not know you had.

I didn’t say, I follow my own advice. I know what I have to do, but I just can’t seem to do it.

But wait, I did do it—I am doing it, right?

The schedule I use for my day I call “the daily backbone” and is based on Benjamin Franklin’s time blocking practice (which he really did) and I wrote about here. In January.

Now it is the other January and we are in the wake of yet another new moon, and a new-ish pandemic (read the other blog), and I am still struggling with implementation. But, to quote me again, “if I create a schedule and that schedule works, then I won’t get to create another one. That doesn’t sound like fun.”

But hey, you know what, feeling good about how I spend my time and having a blog and a clientele and a paycheck to show for it would be fun, too, right?

I realized not in writing, but in re-reading my Intention blog, that I keep failing to add the narrative, to write the poem. I arrange all the pieces—the space, time, plan, pens, paper (dear God the pens and paper), but I am afraid to fill in the words.

It is fear. Full-on spider-level, kill-it-with-fire fear.

What if I don’t or what if I do write something? What if no one or everyone reads it? What if I miss the obvious because I didn’t do the right research and look like an idiot? What if I never share an original insight and just look plain dumb?

According to Ben and me, at certain points in the day, I should ask myself:

What good will I do today?

Allow words, like the weather, to change my plans
because they

What will make today great?

pull on, pull from, pull toward what I already know:

What do I need to hear/say?

I already know
all the words to all the things I will ever

What are my priorities for the day?

write.

What has stirred/is stirring?

All the words stir
clockwise: the page fills, the type sets itself to the page;
counterclockwise: revised, reset, rewound.

What is out of my control?

All the words on the page 

What good have I done today?

rearranged what already was and made something that wasn’t.