Everywhere you turn, someone somewhere—from magazines to blogs to junk mail bulletins—has advice on “making time.” David Allen turned the simple act of “getting things done” into an empire and a trademarked initialism; Danny O’Brien coined the term “life hacks” and inspired the seventh most popular blog on the net; Merlin Mann threw real-world solutions into the mix by crafting practical systems using Quicksilver, index cards, and pithy metaphors about sandwiches. Their systems are popular for good reason: they’re straightforward, and they work. What specific “thing” you’re looking to accomplish doesn’t really matter: whether you want to write, to paint, to exercise, to learn French—it all boils down to making time for the things that you love by sticking to a few basic principles:
* Prioritize.
* Dump the crap.
* Stop wasting time.
* Sacrifice what doesn’t matter so you can concentrate on the things that do.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
It’s sound advice; I wholeheartedly endorse it. Everyone’s proverbial grandmother has been saying this kind of stuff since everyone was proverbially nine. But every now and then, there’s a short span of time that simply refuses to be managed; sometimes there are just no more minutes to be squeezed out of a day.
I am having one of those spans.
Up until this past month, I had been (approximately) managing a writing and life schedule. I admit that I still hadn’t hit a stride that could be maintained, but progress was being made, albeit inconsistent. But February has turned into a month inside a blender: new ingredients keep coming in while everything inside reels and spins.
As I mentioned in my first post, I am serving on jury duty; what I didn’t mention is that I’m serving on a murder trial. This case is a huge but unavoidable time suck. Fortunately court is not in session every weekday, but the trial is scheduled to run until the end of February, not including deliberation. I knew my productivity would be curtailed to a certain extent, but I had hoped that through the fine arts of manipulating, prioritizing, and strategic ignoring, I could maintain a steady, if lesser, schedule of writing.
And then my brain stopped working.
Labyrinthitis, it turns out, is an adventure in and of itself: all my mind’s a stage, and all the world merely players in it. For two weeks I’ve felt like a brain floating inside a jar: disembodied, isolated, unable to engage or make sense of things. When I lie down, the bed ripples with the beat of my heart, but the vertigo and dizziness haven’t been nearly as difficult to handle as the inability to think. During the worst moments, I forgot how to operate the peanut butter. I could barely read or write. We all have those senile moments when you walk into a room and forget why you came, but this has been much more concentrated: by simply turning my head, I could forget what was in front of me.
I’m not ashamed to admit that at times I’ve been scared. Eventually (hopefully) it should all go away, but I can’t think like I used to: my focus is all out of focus. And though less so than before, the world is still an ever-bobbing place.
Then last week, on top of writing, work, life, jury duty, and the roller coaster ride that is labyrinthitis, I managed to pick up a stone cold mother of a head cold. All coinciding with (and messing up) my menstrual cycle.
That I haven’t run anyone through with a sword is probably a miracle.
Despite all this, I have been trying to get things done; I have been trying to make time. My phones have been ignored; I’ve kept my favorite forum to a minimum. The apartment is a pigsty, my email at Inbox 161, the fridge virtually empty but for an inch of milk, some grainy mustard, and a couple of dessicated plums. During small chunks of relative clarity, I have scribbled notes on scraps of paper and tweaked small bits on this website. (N.B.: If you’re not well enough to drive a car, you’re not well enough to fake your way through PHP.) I cannot sacrifice what little sleep I’m getting, nor can I make my neurons fire any faster: all told, this post will have taken six hours to write; the previous post took nine. It’s not much, but it’s progress of a sort, and right now this is as good as it gets. All attempts at unearthing another minute in the day are met by this particular bitch of time with ropy cackling.
Time management is a good thing. Most often unproductivity is the result of procrastination and an overindulgence of “ooh, look at the pretty shiny.” But sometimes it happens regardless of want or sacrifice or life hack or dedication to a dream: circumstances pile atop circumstances, and the best that a body can do is wait for a couple to pile off again.
It has been frustrating to watch pages fly off the calendar while none have accrued in a text file. It feels a lot like failure. I haven’t been able to get very far ahead these past couple of weeks, and as my brain clears, I’m going to find a million places where I’ve fallen behind. By the end of the month, the best that I can hope is that on average I’ve maintained position. I won’t be sick forever; jury duty will end.
Until then, I just keep trying. And I wait.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
heal first, write later. we will wait for you.
Thank you, foo.