SOLSC: Time Management

            Since Jack died, any time management skill I had has deteriorated. I make to-do lists and never look at them. I do things not on my list. I go to sleep too late, wake up too late... Well, here’s how my morning went today...

            Preface: I lost an hour of sleep Saturday night, made worse by going to sleep almost an hour later than usual (2:45 instead of 1:45 a.m.).

            So I’d thought I’d go to bed earlier than usual last night. But I’m a night owl. Once it hits 9:30 p.m., I stop feeling tired, even if I am. Not in bed until almost 1:30 Sunday night.

8:30 a.m. My alarm goes off. (This is my attempt to get a decent start on the day. It's half an hour later than I had to wake up before I retired.)

8:49 a.m. I actually wake up. The alarm had fit very neatly into my dream, so I guess that’s why it didn’t wake me for real. I switch off the alarm, which turns on the radio.

9:30 a.m. I wake up again. Apparently, I went back to sleep even though I’d rolled over onto my back and I think I can’t sleep on my back.

9:50 a.m. I actually get out of bed. Lying in bed listening to my local public radio station gives me the illusion that I am learning something from the news. But some seven hours later, I no longer remember what was so riveting.

9:50–10:20 a.m. I’ve gotten my New York Times, which is delivered to my apartment door, and Publishers Weekly, which I retired from five years ago and where I still do free-lance work. Then I read all of the Times’s front page story about the Saudi royal family members and others who were “arrested” last fall, and read the front page portion of the stories about Kenya’s historic drought and voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district. In PW, I read the long news story about feminist bookstores (there used to be 100, and now fewer than 10, but they’ve been doing very well since Trump’s election) and the opinion “Soapbox” piece about writing historical fiction and how closely to hew to fact.

10:20–11:30 a.m. I open my laptop to write an e-mail to my B&B hostess in New Orleans to ask her a few questions about the delicious muffins she sent me. Instead:

            1. I get an e-mail from a friend about a movie we’re planning to see on Thursday. She suggests we order our tickets in advance, but when I go to the theater website, the movie isn’t available on Thursday. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out if this is true, and then check another theater, where it is showing on Thursday, and then e-mail back my friend.

            2. I see an e-mail from a PW colleague with an attachment, but when I click on it, my e-mail warns me it may be deceptive. I go to the PW mail site to ask the colleague if he sent me an attachment. But there I see an e-mail from another colleague that requires me to go to another website to check out a document, which has some conceptual problems. So I have to e-mail her back, explaining as well as I can what the problem is and how it might be fixed. This takes a lot more time. But when I click “Send” after a while I get an error message that I’m not connected to the Internet. BUT I AM. Yet another example of computers lying.

            3. And I forgot to send the e-mail I intended to write in the first place.

11:30–11:45 a.m. I write all of this in my journal.

            And after this, I finally take a shower, get dressed, and return to the kitchen for breakfast. Or is it lunch by now? You tell me.

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I’m participating in the 11th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 12 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!