So I haven’t been able to formulate anything in writing that really makes sense to me lately.  I do write at least 750 words every day, though, kind of in a stream of consciousness style.  So, instead of trying to make a post precisely how I think I want it, I’m just going to post what I wrote this morning as soon as I woke up, with zero modifications.  If there are typos or errors…who cares.

“Ok, time to write. I haven’t written in the morning for a couple of days. It goes back to that thing I have for some reason been trying to write about but having no success with: productivity. Why is it that I can’t seem to get anything done when I have more time to get stuff done?

There are a couple of things rattling through my head. One of them is something that Dawn said a week back when she and I had coffee. She was like, “I don’t like goals.” And that kind of struck me. I’m a process guy, too. I enjoy doing things. If I get a million dollars or recognition or whatever is not necessarily the main thing, but if I enjoy doing something, learn a little along the way, and tell myself that what I’m doing is worth my time for whatever reason, then I’m ok with it. The end goal isn’t necessarily the biggest thing in the world.

But it is a good thing, though. It gives you something to focus on. It gives your current work a purpose. Let’s not call it work, let’s call it action, movement, momentum, anything but work. When you have a goal, it defines your search. It’s the google search bar, I suppose. You put something in that search bar and you might find exactly what you’re looking for, or you might end up looking at pictures of the red panda for 70 minutes. The point is, the search bar (your goal) can help lead you in the right direction. If you just left your search bar blank the entire time, you wouldn’t have very much luck on google. I guess you would have fun on the other sites that you would randomly find by typing website addresses into the address bar, though. Who knows where you’d end up?

So yesterday was a bit frustrating for me. I had so many things to do – or that I wanted to do – and that I didn’t accomplish, really. I went out a few times even in search of a good place to get some work done, and I wanted to go to a new place, I wanted to be somewhere kind of novel where I wouldn’t be distracted (that’s a contradiction, I know, because if it were a new place wouldn’t I be more inclined to look at the new things and see what was going on?), and I ended up walking around Myeongdong, a touristy shopping area that I like to wander around, and went to a McDonald’s, only to find that their wifi didn’t work, so I just grabbed a bus that took me directly to the McDonald’s I always go to in Itaewon, which was kind of the opposite of my goal in the first place.

My goal, if we want to be picky about it, was to get some work done yesterday, and I did that, at least a little. But it was all over the place. It was last minute. It was not what I was expecting. I didn’t feel rushed, I didn’t feel bad, but well…maybe I felt a little rushed. Maybe I was frustrated with myself that I wasn’t getting more done. What did I want to achieve yesterday:

Do most of trivia for Tuesday night.

Lesson plan for two two-hour classes on Tuesday day.

Start the application process for Bridgetown Comedy Festival this year.

Pay the water bill at the bank.

Exercise.

Clean up the house.

Write a blog journal.

Eat at home.

Read the last 100 pages of Travels with Charley.

Get my 10,000 Steps in.

And I can’t really think if there were any other things that I wanted to do on Monday.

So, looking at that list, that’s a fair amount of stuff to do in a day, especially if you are to accomplish every single one of those things. And what happened? Well, actually, I got most of it done. I exercised at home and then walked up the mountain I live on, even on just about the coldest day of the year. And then, I’m not sure how, but by the time I showered up and ate, it was like 3 PM, maybe even 4. I don’t know how I got there, but I did. And then I left the house to try to get some things done, but it didn’t really happen for a while. It took like an hour of going to the bank to find that it was closed, and then wandering around the city and finding the one McDonald’s in Korea whose wifi wasn’t working before I just went to the places that I knew to get stuff done. I did most of trivia, then did some shopping, then came home, then was visited by my wonderfully weird friend Kay, who ridiculed the way I lived and kept my computer, so it was at that point that I knew I needed to do more, to do better, at my life. I got into one of those mini-organizational fits where I cleaned up my computer desktop, organized my haphazard files laying all over my home screen, tidied the living room, even the corners, went over my lesson plans without having anything on in the background, watched some video of my sets to help see which one I wanted to submit to the festival, and when that was all said and done, then I gave myself permission to finish the last 20 minutes of the episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that I’d been watching when Kay stopped by to give me the sets of mine he recorded. I didn’t finish the book, but I got closer and read a bit more before bed, and I was in my bed by 12:45 which was my goal for this week. And even though the lights weren’t off at that time, I was still ready to relax and call it a day before I read a little longer.

I guess when I just try to randomly throw myself at tasks throughout a day, it’s a little harder to get things done. Goals might not be the best thing for everybody, but they can also help me get my shit together. Especially with an abundance of time. Write something down, check it off, and see what comes next. I don’t have to accomplish every single thing on my list, but at least it’s there, encouraging me to do it, or at least something like it.”