A New Plan

Life has ways of making things complicated, don't you think? We're bopping along, doing our own thing, thinking we've got it all under control, and then stuff happens. You know the kind of stuff I mean - it pops up out of nowhere and gives you one more thing to worry about while you were already juggling pretty much everything you could handle. And then a few more things come along and before you know it, your juggling capacity has increased and you learn that you were stronger than you thought. It's a great life lesson and so forth, but then you realize that you've got to put some of those things down or pretty much have a nervous breakdown.

I see you nodding - yeah, you've been there too. I can tell.

Life's been doing that to me a lot lately. I'm delegating as fast as I can with one hand while juggling everything else in the other, and it's been a pretty frisky game. This last month has presented some additional health challenges for me, my family, and some extended family, and we've had to put everything else on hold and just deal with those. In the middle of that, I'm still editing up a blue streak and we were just put in as Webelos leaders and trying to keep up with kids' activities ... and stuff ... and yeah. It's been crazy.

And in the middle of all that, I realized that I haven't been writing.

You might think differently - after all, I've released a fair number of books in the last few years. And that's awesome. But I'm not spending the time I should on doing the thing that keeps my well filled. Writing does that for me - it keeps me focused and sane and on target, and when I don't make the time for it, everything else goes out of alignment.

But when am I supposed to do it? I have a family that I love - they need me. I have a career that I love - it needs me. I have other obligations that I enjoy (and some that I do because they're obligations, hence the word) and then someone has to do the grocery shopping - the groceries won't shop themselves. Where do I fit it in? How do I make it work?

I was thinking about it last night and realized something. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I give 10% of my income to the Church. This is used to help build temples and church buildings all over the world, and I know that I am blessed for doing it. In fact, when I give that money away, I find myself even better able to meet my financial obligations - it doesn't make sense on paper, but it happens over and over again and I don't question it. And so then my thoughts continued along the same vein - if giving 10% of my money to a cause that I love helps me financially, not only because I'm blessed but because it helps make me a better steward, what would happen if I set aside certain amounts of writing time that are just mine?

So I'm launching a new plan. An awesome, experimental, maybe goofy plan. Every Monday night from nine to midnight is Tristi Writing Time. I'll work hard to get my other stuff finished up beforehand and then give myself those three hours a week to write whatever I want to. I've tried working it in here and there, but stuff always comes up and I don't stick to my guns like I should, so now, by implementing a certain time just for my own books, maybe I can create a routine and get it down to a system.

We'll see how it goes.  :)  In the meantime, I'm excited to give it a try.