Self-committal

I committed myself to spending this weekend working.  Not teaching-working, but work nonetheless: a lot of administrative stuff for my teaching studio, acting prep work for the readings and TV shoot I have coming up, writing work, and few non-work-but-still mandatory personal things.

I lost half of Saturday to some not-previously-on-my-list personal life to-dos (like spending a couple of hours with my dear friend who is due to give birth any minute and whom I will thus not be able to see much of for months), so even though I worked almost incessantly til almost midnight yesterday, I still started off this morning with a to-do list with 14 items on it.  I even set an alarm (which I am loath to do on a Sunday) to make sure I got up in time to tackle this list.  I have a deadline of 10pm - 3 minutes away as I am typing this sentence - because that is when the season premier of Breaking Bad comes on which I am absolutely NOT going to miss (thank goodness for DVRs so I can start it a few minutes late).  

I have had other weekends where I had long lists of to-dos, and haven't gotten a third of them done.  But this weekend, I actually wrote down my list in my calendar - including the personal things like morning pages, yoga, and meditation - to hold myself accountable.  I checked each thing off as I completed it.  When I don't make a list, it is too easy to just let something slide, to say "I need a day off to do nothing" and then spend my entire week frustrated that I didn't get these things done when I had the chance.  I was not willing to let that happen this weekend -- and frankly, I couldn't afford to, literally, as much of the work is part of keeping my teaching business going which is what keeps food on my table.

At the end of the day, as soon as I finish this blog post, I will have two items left on my list uncompleted. Which is actually a pretty good ratio (and I may still get one of those done after Breaking Bad tonight, maybe).  And though I would have liked some downtime napping in one of my zero-gravity lounge chairs in my backyard, I feel much more personally satisfied for having gotten almost everything done on my list.  I will start the week lighter, happier, more focused, and ready to keep working since I don't have to play catch up.  So even though it might seem a bit crazy to commit oneself to working all weekend, I'll be saner this week for having done so.  At least I hope so.  And so does my boyfriend.