scottahill (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scottahill) wrote2009-08-14 01:27 pm
scottahill) wrote2009-08-14 01:27 pm
Schedules
As full-time employment makes its reappearance in my life, my thoughts turn towards setting up some sort of weekly schedule. I think a fairly strict schedule would be good for me. I'm not really fond of spontaneity:
* if Jen suggests that we go do something unusual on a given weekend, my first reaction is mild panic, even if I'm really bored and it's something I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy.
* I drive Jen nuts by wanting to plan things in excruciating detail.
* When I'm making plans with other people (like in a group), I have to pin down exactly what is going down, even when it's fairly obvious.
* When I have a whole day free, like a Saturday, I usually get nothing done. While I look forward to large blocks of free time, when I get there I feel overwhelmed and spend the time numbing myself with web or books or tv. I'm often (though not always) more productive in shorter blocks of time. The end result is my feeling like I never have enough time, even when I was unemployed, even BEFORE Miriam was born.
And yet, I've never been at good at maintaining a schedule. I don't even keep calendars well; I have a number of old calendars with notes written in the first two months, and then blank afterwards. Why not?
One reason, I think, is that I WANT to be spontaneous, a free spirit. It's probably the reason I went barefoot in college: thought it might bring out my inner hippie (or my inner Doone maybe). I associate creativity with spontaneity, although that isn't necessarily so: one can be creative within strict limits, as sonnet writers demonstrate. :)
Another reason is that I am a perfectionist. If I make a schedule, and then break it, I feel like I've failed and I give up entirely. Or I agonize over exactly how much time to schedule for class preparation, instead of allowing for flexibility.
Third, schedules feel like traps to me. I'm afraid that if I don't have enough free time, then I will burn out. I feel like the schedule will be hovering over me, judging me, all the time. Each scheduled block of time is one more opportunity to fail.
So in short, I think I'll need a lot of structure this semester if I don't want to be miserable and totally sleep-deprived: a certain amount of scheduling is necessary just to coordinate with Jen and our childcare folks, and I'd like to have the whole week planned (with time set aside for vegging and reading and playing and whatnot). To make it work, I need to (a) accept that I'm a person who needs structure, and that doesn't make me stodgy or boring or uncreative; (b) occasionally re-evaluate the schedule; and (c) cut myself some slack: to paraphrase the New Testament, the schedule is made for Scott, not Scott for the schedule.
Thoughts?
* if Jen suggests that we go do something unusual on a given weekend, my first reaction is mild panic, even if I'm really bored and it's something I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy.
* I drive Jen nuts by wanting to plan things in excruciating detail.
* When I'm making plans with other people (like in a group), I have to pin down exactly what is going down, even when it's fairly obvious.
* When I have a whole day free, like a Saturday, I usually get nothing done. While I look forward to large blocks of free time, when I get there I feel overwhelmed and spend the time numbing myself with web or books or tv. I'm often (though not always) more productive in shorter blocks of time. The end result is my feeling like I never have enough time, even when I was unemployed, even BEFORE Miriam was born.
And yet, I've never been at good at maintaining a schedule. I don't even keep calendars well; I have a number of old calendars with notes written in the first two months, and then blank afterwards. Why not?
One reason, I think, is that I WANT to be spontaneous, a free spirit. It's probably the reason I went barefoot in college: thought it might bring out my inner hippie (or my inner Doone maybe). I associate creativity with spontaneity, although that isn't necessarily so: one can be creative within strict limits, as sonnet writers demonstrate. :)
Another reason is that I am a perfectionist. If I make a schedule, and then break it, I feel like I've failed and I give up entirely. Or I agonize over exactly how much time to schedule for class preparation, instead of allowing for flexibility.
Third, schedules feel like traps to me. I'm afraid that if I don't have enough free time, then I will burn out. I feel like the schedule will be hovering over me, judging me, all the time. Each scheduled block of time is one more opportunity to fail.
So in short, I think I'll need a lot of structure this semester if I don't want to be miserable and totally sleep-deprived: a certain amount of scheduling is necessary just to coordinate with Jen and our childcare folks, and I'd like to have the whole week planned (with time set aside for vegging and reading and playing and whatnot). To make it work, I need to (a) accept that I'm a person who needs structure, and that doesn't make me stodgy or boring or uncreative; (b) occasionally re-evaluate the schedule; and (c) cut myself some slack: to paraphrase the New Testament, the schedule is made for Scott, not Scott for the schedule.
Thoughts?