As I type these first words it is 4:24 PM and I’ve successfully managed to avoid another day of work. Yes, I showed up at the office. Yes I’m collecting a pay check for this day, but have I worked? Not so much.
The irony is not lost on me. For a while now, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to find a way to make a living with blogging and writing. I believe the phrase was, “I’d like to get paid to blog” to which K replied, “I think you already do.” Well, I’d like to get paid to blog, ‘cause it’s what I’m paid to do, not ‘cause no one is paying enough attention to what’s happening to realize that I’m not being terribly productive and am, instead, spending hours upon silent hours behind my strategically positioned computer monitor.
The truth is that being paid to be a writer in any form may just be a pipe dream. I read the writings of some of my bloggy heroes and feel like I can’t compare with their wit and depth. Hell, some days (sometimes several consecutive ones) I can’t even think of anything to write about which is ironic to me, because last November I took part in and “won” the National Novel Writing Month challenge and managed to find something to write about, no matter how mundane, every day.
I have a very precarious list of items I try to fit into every day and sometimes (heh! Most days) I can’t fit them all in.
Sleeping: Sleeping is very important and the truth is I can rarely fit in enough of it. I’m not a morning person and getting up to go to work takes a lot of effort. That’s been discussed and no need to rehash it now, but the point is that I need to sleep later than I am able. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning and I drag my sad ass through my morning routine of shit, shower and shave. Due to recent developments, one or more of those items frequently falls by the wayside in the morning. Once I do arrive at work, I spend half the morning fighting the urge to go back to sleep. The real irony of this is that in the evenings I am not the least bit tired and I have no inclination to go to bed before 11:00 and quite frequently later than that.
Blog reading: I’ve found a number of witty, insightful, wise and otherwise awesome blog authors. I like to read everything they write and I am inspired to be more like them when I do. The problem with this is that if I don’t stay on top if it these blog posts can pile up very quickly. After a week of considerable sporacity with my attention to my blog reader, I logged in on Monday morning to find that I had 126 unread posts to get through. I set about working on them after a slow start and spent the whole day reading. I know that the list grew as the day progressed but I managed to get the list down to about 45 by the time I went home. I read some at home and finished up at work on Tuesday.
Blog writing: I’d like to be doing this everyday but as I mentioned I’m not always inspired and unless I’ve got something specific in mind to write about I find it easy to postpone that task which is not a good thing if I want to “hone my craft”. I need to make more time for this. Occasionally, I even make the time to do this at home on my own time. That really gets in the way of some of the other activities though.
Television: For years I’ve been trying to cut down on the amount of television I watch and for a little while that was going well. I even had a night or two each week where there was nothing on I cared about watching. This season though, I’ve gotten sucked into a number of new shows, dammit! I find that by the time I’ve gotten home from work, maybe done an hour worth of Wii Fit (which usually takes closer to an hour and a half), taken a shower, and made dinner, I only have time to get two or maybe three shows in before I’ve got to go to bed so I can start the whole damn thing over again the next day. By the time the week-end comes I’m so backed up on weekly TV shows in the DVR that I’ve got to dedicate a chunk of time to clearing that out. I usually have just barely managed to clear the week’s worth of shows out when the Sunday night shows start. My television consumption has just about turned into a full time job.
Exercise: This is something I know I need to do but find so distasteful it’s not even funny. I find it very easy to put other things at a higher priority than exercising. I wish I felt differently about this. I want to have the physique of someone who exercises as if his life depended on it (doesn’t it really?) but I don’t want to do the work that comes with that. I try to at least spend some time on the Wii Fit when I get home from work but I find that when I do, I don’t end up getting around to eating dinner until close to 9:00 so I can’t help but wonder if the benefit I’m getting from making the effort isn’t over shadowed by the damage I’m doing by eating so late. These last few days my weight has been back down to below 300 pounds (barely) but that’s the first time in quite awhile (and it’s not because I’ve been exercising.)
Hmmm. It feels like I’m leaving something out. What could that be? Oh yes that’s right…
Work: Occasionally, it is necessary for me to actually do my job, the one I get paid for—well the one that’s in my actual job description. My job is not by any stretch of the imagination, engaging enough to occupy 40 hours a week and as a result things often sit and collect dust until they become urgent and then I’ll actually give them my attention. This is a terrible way to work and I know it, but to be perfectly honest (and why stop now), I detest everything about my job so much that I just can’t muster the energy to give it more priority than the other things I’ve listed here.
It leaves me in a real pickle. I really, truly, desperately want to find a new job… Well, I really, truly, desperately want to quit this job anyway. I’m not so sure I want another job, but not being of the independently wealthy persuasion, not working is not really an option for me. So I don’t want to work at this job any more, but I can’t afford to be unemployed, and I don’t know what I want to do instead, not to mention that at this point with the current economy, I don’t really think there’s another job out there for me to be had, so I guess I’ll just have to make the best of it for the time being.
Wow, this is quite a side track from what I was going to write… Which was what? I don’t remember….
Oh that’s right, me sick, Swine Flu which is now H1N1 Flu and being at work (and no I don’t have Swine flu). Sounds like a good distraction/inspiration for tomorrow.
Until then…
Riggledo 