It isn’t even half over, and already it’s been One Of Those Days. You know the ones.
The plumbing in my apartment decided to pick this morning to act up. I ran late for work. The bus was so crowded I had to stand at the very front and get off any time someone needed to get out the front door. Once I got to move farther back, there was a man who didn’t look crazy, but who mumbled and muttered, occasionally punctuating his reverie with a sucker punch of profanity that made those of us around him look at each other with classic ‘WTF?’ expressions.
In my travels around the wilds of the Internets (the blogosphere in particular), I was linked to an article on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s of America, Inc. site called “50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work“. I skimmed the list - thinking in particular about strategies for me to get through NaNo successfully - and one of the suggestions jumped out at me:
Pay yourself an hourly wage for time worked, and don’t allow yourself leisure activities (movies, dinner out, etc.) unless you can pay for it with this writing money.
Why didn’t I think of that? And then I remembered: Oh yeah. I *did* think of that. Except, I was going to pay myself a dollar every time I did something on my to-do list. There were only two problems with that strategy: 1) I’m terrible at to-do lists (making or keeping them), and 2) I’ve got champagne tastes. $1 is barely enough to get me to do something I want to do, let alone something I am actively avoiding. My procrastination-fu is legendary.
The article got me thinking again (always a dangerous thing, that). First, I need to pay myself more. $8 per hour sounds about right - enough to motivate me but not enough to break my budget if I get extra productive. Second, the “don’t allow yourself leisure activities” part is key. Except, for me it’s not about leisure activities (especially things like plays and concerts :P). It’s about media - books, DVD’s, video games, movies at the theater, and dear God, the music!! If I keep buying music at the rate I’ve been going, Amazon’s MP3 Store is going to have my first-born, iTunes my 2nd, and Sound Garden my 3rd. So, instead of just buying album after album only to discover only halfway to my next check that I’m just about broke, I will have to work for every $1 I spend on any form of media, from now on. And I won’t pay myself just to write, but to do anything I tend to be passive aggressive about: cleaning, doing laundry, organizing my stuff, doing my taxes.
And of course, I have a question for those of you out there: do you know any good prepaid credit/debit cards? I don’t want to open another bank account if I can help it, and I don’t want to leave it to just estimating how much of my total money I’ve “earned”…”Oops! I just spent three times as much as I paid myself in one trip to Barnes and Noble. Silly me! I guess I’ll just have to catch up!” Yeah, no. That way lies disaster. Any suggestions?
Last Thursday, I said that I’d be putting together a list of 30 Things I Want to Do Before I Turn 30 - 30 by 30. I’m a day late (good old life: gets in the way just when it’s supposed to), but after a good amount of thought I’ve put together my list.
I’ve also added a counter to my sidebar - I have 425 days (just over 46 weeks) until I turn 30. I also added one for 40, but that list is going to take a whole lot more thought.
Also, I reserve the right to modify this list as I progress, within reason. I don’t want to be lazy about this, but at the same time I know that things happen and you never know how life is going to turn out. So if there is a reason I absolutely cannot accomplish something on this list, I’ll change it to something else.
