I Choose Me

This week has been a decidedly slow one and you know what? It was my fault. This week was a prime example of how laziness can sneak up on you. It started last week when I arrived home from my trip home. After seeing my parents and my sisters family I arrived home from the airport around 11pm. Instead of being responsible I just threw my bag on the floor and went to sleep. The next day after work I came home and promptly ignored my bag and my desk which had a pile of CDs and DVDs covering it that I had transferred to my iPod before the trip. As the week went on I ignored the dishes, the laundry and the detritus that was accumulating on the floors. There were things I needed to do on the site, stories I wanted to write, a sketching project that was only half finished and a myriad of other things I could have been doing and I ignored it all. In short I had a severe bout of laziness. What I did with my days I do not know, but it wasn't what I should have been doing. I am amazed at my own ability to waste through an entire day with nothing to show for it. Would it have killed me to spend five minutes to pick up my crap, to work on one of my many projects for an hour? Instead I spent my time doing nothing.

It comes down to choice, right or wrong choices are made nearly every second of everyday. This sentence was a choice, as were all the sentences before and after it. Each Sunday I make the choice to post this blog and believe me it is a choice I have to make every time I post. Yet the choices we make have ramifications, I choose not to unpack but I still had to eventually unpack.

A few weeks I proposed a question about how to control ones own creativity and I think this may be something that helps shine a glimmer of light on the question. It boils down to choice. I have gobs of time and I enjoy writing, drawing and a clean home so spending a few minutes to work on those things would have left me with plenty of time to waste later. Instead of being diligent I am waiting until the last minute and trying to finish everything all at once. This means I am wasting my time doing whatever it is I do and not being creative. I had several breakout moments this weekend in terms of stories all of which came in the middle of my run this afternoon instead of at my desk. My run was the only time of the day that my mind was free, that I wasn't thinking of a deadline or something else. The choices I made throughout the week had left me with no time for myself and that is a very dangerous thing. When I get a story idea or when one of their many pieces falls into place it sets off a cascade. Ideas are flying around and I am no longer here, it is an exhilarating buzz one that seems to come less and less these days because I have filled my days with to much to do. My choices throughout the past few months to look for work, to polish the resume and improve my skills were just as detrimental as my decisions to not to my chores because they took away from my personal time. With no outlet, with no time for it to roam free, my imagination comes through when I am at work or on a run instead of when I need to to work at my unused desk.

This week and next will be busy times as the summer movie seasons comes to it's climax with reviews inbound for Predators, Despicable Me, The Sorcerers Apprentice, Inception and Salt over the next few weeks. But I must to allow myself to get so carried away that I leave no time for my own projects and works. This week I will be scheduling “Me” time at the end of each day, after I finish my daily tasks. It will be an experiment of sorts because unlike my failed attempts to write during a set block of time it will be a time of freedom. No plans, no deadlines, no work related projects, just whatever brings me peace and happiness. If it all goes as planned I won't have to force myself to write or draw or be creative, though I might have to force myself to stop when sleepy time comes around.

Until next time my friends. Sayonara.