Administrating your Life

I've no doubt talked about this before, but the importance of working out a good schedule of work can never be underestimated.  It is absolutely crucial, especially because it can be easy for a writer or artist to be controlled by the present moment.  Ever hear of the tyranny of the present?  It's real, folks.  Even if you don't have a full or part-time job while you are trying to be a writer, it's still easy to get sucked up in our to-do lists: okay, I have to do laundry, change the cat's litter, do the dishes, call friend A, mail the bills, call friend B, check facebook, check e-mails, check facebook, exercise, take a break and watch an episode of The League, answer the phone, frick the day's done!!!  There's a lot of stuff that we need to get done each day, particularly if we live alone.  If we don't know how to manage our time well then we're screwed.  I'll be the first to say that I don't manage my time well.  Over the past few years I have noticed my complete inability to manage my time and have tried to come up with a laid-back system that can help me administrate my life better.  Hopefully what I share with you can be helpful, even if you aren't a budding writer or artist.

First of all, a physical calendar is a must.  Personally, since I'm all traditional and such, I refuse to own an i-phone let alone use my phone as a calendar.  But if your phone is always on you (mine isn't) then it makes sense to use it as a calendar because it can send you reminders.  There are countless good calendars that you can use on the computer and/or Internet as well.  Still, I'm serious, you should have a physical, print calendar that can fit in your bag or purse or whatever.  This calendar should be your primary calendar.  Write absolutely everything in it, from appointments to reminders to a to-do list.  The key to the calendar is that you check it every morning and every night.  If you write everything in it, then you can't ever miss anything or forget something; and, more importantly, you don't have to think about things until you get around to seeing them in the calendar and then doing them.  It saves a whole lot of mental anguish.  Saving yourself mental anguish is essential if you want to use brain power for activities other than working a desk job. 

When you have the calendar and are writing everything in it, you can better arrange your days.  If you are writing everything down in your calendar, then you are including chores like washing dishes and doing laundry.  When you are doing that, you can see how much time each day you'll be spending doing necessary chores so that you can decide whether you should write bills on Monday or Tuesday, call friend A on Monday or Tuesday, etc.  Once you know how much time you'll be spending doing necessary life events, you can allocate time to do less necessary life events like calling friends.  You can further allocate rest and relaxation time.  Then, once you have everything written down, you'll know approximately how much time you will have to write, or do whatever your hobby is.  You don't even have to write down when you're going to do an activity as long as you know that you will do that activity on a certain day.  Even better, you can start to arrange unnecessary life events all on one day, and then have the rest of the week to write in your free time.  If you aren't keeping track of all the things that you need to do in a calendar, though, you wouldn't be able to free up your time in that way. 

With a physical, print calendar it's also easier to review what's coming up for the week and when you'll have time to do your writing.  Of course, if you get into a routine, you might know that you'll have time for writing on certain days, but it's always good to have a calendar to look at and see all the time you've carved out for yourself.  Sometimes the pressures of life are overwhelming to the point that it seems like you'll never write again.  Having a calendar handy to work everything out on will ease your tension in such cases. 

You should only use your phone or ipad calendar, or whatever electronic calendar you're using, as a backup.  For instance, if you decide that you want to call friend B on your way home from a social outing, then you should put that in your phone calendar as a reminder.  And if you are the type of person who likes to arrange their days by the hour or minute, then use your electronic calendar to give you reminders at the time that you want to do certain activities.  Otherwise, the print calendar should be the way to go so that you can keep your mind clear, not get interrupted by buzzing, and still always stay on top of your life.

The next tip is to write everything down.  Yes, I've already said to write everything down in your calendar, but I'm now I'm not talking about chores and events and such.  I mean write everything down.  Carry around a small notebook or notebook paper with you everywhere you go.  Have another notebook by your bed.  Wherever you are you should be able to write something down if you need to.  Writers need this tip more than other people, but everyone should learn to start writing down every idea, every thought, everything.  I'm serious when I say that our minds can often get bogged down with things that we've forgotten, even if those things aren't important.  When we spend any length of time thinking we should note what our brainstorming has created.  If we look at our note a day or two later and decide it's worthless, then fine, but whether we realize it or not our minds spend a lot of energy trying to recall ideas that we've already thought of before.  If we can either store it away somewhere or let our mind know that we'll never be needing that thought again, then we'll be cleared for more action.  Seriously.  This is a serious piece of advice.  Start writing everything down your mind will be far more clear and productive. 

Obviously you'll need to work out some system for storing all your notes.  That is my third and final piece of advice on administrating your life that I'll give today.  You should have a solid filing system.  If you're anything like me, you won't often put away files; but it's important to know that everything has a place for when you're feeling cluttered.  Have a file for correspondence, for bills, for bank information, for your notes, for just about everything.  Your life will be more clean and, most importantly, your mind will be far more clean.  Seriously.  If you can free your mind from all the clutter and store the crap elsewhere, to be used later when you want it or need it, then you will be greatly productive. 

Organization

I woke up this morning far earlier than normal because I had thought of a line for a poem, "Sound the chorus flame," which sounds kind of cool, and then suddenly my mind raced to add on to it.  This happens to me frequently enough that I know not to sit around only to forget later and regret I hadn't written stuff down.  Since poetry has been more or less relegated to a secondary status in my life for the past few months, I knew I had to get up out of bed to write down the lines. 

On this particular morning, however, another more urgent and excited notion came to mind: the lines would perfectly suit a four-part Christmas poem that I failed to finish two years ago.  I had promised my fellow seminarians that with each passing week in Advent two years ago that a new part of the poem would be completed.  A rough draft of each part, at least.  The problem, of course, was that I tried writing the poem during Advent... which means that I was also in the middle of preparations for final exams and, at the time, for the Christmas Eve service at the church I interned at.  Needless to say, only Part I ever saw the light of day, and Part II just needed some more tender-loving care.  I never gave Part II that little extra push because, while writing it, I came to realize the hopelessness of the project.  I can't say it was any good, but I want to say that I wrote a four-part poem.  You aren't a poet unless you write a multi-part poem.  That's a known fact.

Anyway, the point of the whole matter is that I can only use the lines that I had thought of this morning to add on to my Advent poem if I can find the original poem.  There's no sense writing part of this poem when I don't know how it will fit in.  So after writing down the lines I searched my computer for old files aaaaaaaand... turns out the Advent poem is one of those that I never saved on my computer.  Not a problem, really, because that just means it's in my yellow folder aptly labeled, "Poems." 

Then I realized that, unfortunately, this is a problem.  First of all, I'm not home.  I didn't bring my poems folder with me; I never do while traveling because I never think that I'll be working on them.  My parents, bless their hearts, are good enough to look for and send me the poem in question, of course.  Yet therein lies the rub, or whatever the saying is: I can't be absolutely sure where in the folder the poem is or what the title is, or if I titled it.  I know that I had been intending to title the poem something along the lines of, "A Journey Echo," or anything with echo, but whether or not that found its way onto the pages I used is another question.  And clearly my "Poems" folder does not include only poems.  When I moved back home I stuffed loose papers into the folder hoping to organize everything after returning home.  Obviously I haven't gotten around to it yet.  The bottom line is that I'd feel terribly rude asking my parents to look for the poem when I'm nearly certain it would take me at least half an hour to find, and I'd have the advantage of knowing what to look for.

You see, kids, organization is key.  Want to be a writer or an artist and think that your lazy housecleaning and organizational habits fit the bill?  Wrong.  Well, maybe right.  There's definitely a strain of stereotype--and perhaps prototype--that says writers just write on whatever they can find and then throw it in the mix.  If the point of being a writer is to write then there's nothing inherently wrong with that stereotype; in fact it is rather encouraging and motivating.  On the other hand, if the point of being a writer is to speak to the masses, then the stereotype is no longer helpful, unless you have a secretary.  Maybe sometime in the near future I'll have a secretary.  Until then, I'm now realizing how worthwhile it is to organize. 

For me, organization has never been more than an idea.  I have a two-drawer cabinet with folders labeled, "Important," "Miscellaneous," "Finances," and "Correspondence" (two of these are filled and three more are waiting).  I also have a little shelf with all of my old journals and soon-to-be-used journals, copies of the Wesley Journal from when I was assistant editor and some other copies, a folder with all of my older and completed writing, and then folders labeled, "In Progress/Research," "Translations" (for Greek, mostly), "Poems," and "Ideas/Outlines."  All of these folders serve a purpose and I'm glad that I have them.  I also have an organization system for my books spanning three rooms of the house for which I am also thankful for because it makes it easy to find the books that I want.  But my personal library is perhaps the best example of how organization has just been an idea to me: books are now strewn all over my room because I ran out of shelf space and I haven't bothered putting any books back, so that the books that do have a place can live in solidarity with the books that don't have a place.  Most of the problem is that when I organized my system I misjudged how much room I'd need and want for some of the sections, namely philosophy and literature.  It's a mess.  As is all my other glorious attempts at organization, because though I have the tools necessary to be well-organized I simply haven't taken the time to actually be well-organized.

Kids, take the time to be organized.  You don't have to be neat, but if you want to be good at any type of self-employment, some serious organization will go a long way.