The Time to Act
This may come as a surprise to you, dear patient readers, but I love to write. I believe I may or may not have made quite an extensive point about that in my last post, and you can go back and decipher what trite message I may have enveloped in those particular words on your own time. But now is not the time for reminiscence nor is it the time for speculation. As if the title of this post wasn't clear enough, it is the time for action.
Summer has always held a redemptive charge to me. I know I've been, over time, an outspoken advocate of the spring, but summer means business. It doesn't fuck around with the occasional teasing of brisk bluster or the threat of flurries amidst the constant rainfall. Summer means business, and in New Jersey, that business is boatloads of heat and humidity. (And, being New Jersey, business is good.) And with the weather, and the general environment of the region, trying so hard to be not only lively but consistent, I've always felt it was my duty to approach this season with a similarly go-getter attitude. Winter's a fine time for malaise, but when the weather heats up, it's go time.
Which brings me to today. Yesterday was not a banner day for me: after two weeks of being home with no leads on the job search, I've finally become impatient with things. See, I'm a man of routine. And for all my bitching in this blog about how much I hated my old routine, I've found it's surprisingly difficult to live without one. Not to mention how challenging it is to suffice on one's expecting lifestyle without any kind of regular income. I'd imagined I would be able to let my stash hold me up for most of the summer, but I've got plans far more ambitious than that--as a result, this kid needs money, big time.
So today, I decided to make a few changes, a few active choices that would, hopefully, allow me to enjoy a greater quality of life over the course of my job hunt. For starters, I decided that I would be taking a ride up to my local Borders to inquire about the possibility of employment. Because I figure if I can't find a job in publishing at this very moment, it might not hurt to have a job working for a bookstore when the publishers come a-callin'. So that's on my to-do list effective immediately.
And it was this notion of a to-do list that's set me on this newfound path. I discovered a short time ago that I'm not the only one in my corner of the blogosphere looking to make changes. And while I certainly won't steal her idea, I've been inspired by the notion of tangible progress to the point where I feel I want to make some tangible goals of my own.
At which point I realized that, despite all my wavering and whimpering and whining, I've actually been astonishingly productive over the last few weeks--and all of that productivity has been in the service of things that have been goal-oriented all along. My attempt to work at a bookstore, for instance, was something I told myself I'd start considering around July 4th. My job hunt, in a perfect world, is the kind of thing I'd like to see realized by my birthday. These are tangible deadlines for tangible goals, and I'm working towards them.
Then I extrapolated further and realized that many of my other goals have been accompanied by deadlines as well. In the absence of regular employment, I've been working on my creative projects--two in particular. My manuscript comes and goes in waves, as I don't feel like I want to rush it for the sake of getting it done. I believe in it, and I believe it will come when it does and I just need to be ready to get the inspiration down. But the other endeavor is my screenplay, an idea hatched near the end of last semester and taken up in earnest by a collaborator that has proven to be not only incredibly creative and funny, but also exceptionally diligent and persistent. And, truth be told, it's her belief in the project that has driven me to invest serious time and thought into it.
Once we realized that we were on to something, and that we were creating material for a viable project that was taking shape faster than either of us probably could have imagined, we set some deadlines as well. By July 4th, we want a sketch of the plot in its entirety, whether storyboarded or just plotted out in paragraphs. Each scene, with at least some vague idea of how we get from one to the next to the next and so on through the whole story. And by my birthday, September 9th, we want a first draft of the entire script done.
And the craziest part about all of this is that, no matter how many times I look at these dates and these goals, I can't help but say to myself, "Yes, you are going to meet that goal." By my birthday, I believe our screenplay will be done.
So on top of all of these goals, which I will of course keep you, loyal readers, posted on, I will also be renewing my weight-loss project. Last year, you'll remember, I took the baseball season as my guide and managed to lose twenty pounds between April and October. I was pleased with what I accomplished, and thrilled that I've kept it off since then. But, like I said, this is a time for action, not complacency. I'm not satisfied with what I weigh now, and now that I've proven to myself that I can do it, I want to do it again. Thus I've tacked on another goal: by the end of the summer, I want to lose another twenty pounds. And to give myself added incentive, I've set myself to the task of dropping at least fifteen by the time I go to Chicago in August for my dear friends' wedding. It will not only make me feel better, but it will perhaps even give me the chance to buy some sexy new clothes and show off The New Hotness™--coming soon!
But I can't act without the tiny, piddling audience I've somehow been able to maintain over the years. So I will be devoting myself to far more regularity in my posting as well, beginning with this one. It's time to stop talking and start doing, to get myself on the path towards the life I want to live, rather than sitting back and letting it happen in front of me. I'm already doing it, setting myself in the right direction, and the time has come to pack up the old camp, follow the trail, and see where it leads me.
And I'll get right to it, just as soon as I finish this episode of Lost.
...what? I've got five seasons to watch before the new season in January. That's a goal and a deadline too, you know!
Summer has always held a redemptive charge to me. I know I've been, over time, an outspoken advocate of the spring, but summer means business. It doesn't fuck around with the occasional teasing of brisk bluster or the threat of flurries amidst the constant rainfall. Summer means business, and in New Jersey, that business is boatloads of heat and humidity. (And, being New Jersey, business is good.) And with the weather, and the general environment of the region, trying so hard to be not only lively but consistent, I've always felt it was my duty to approach this season with a similarly go-getter attitude. Winter's a fine time for malaise, but when the weather heats up, it's go time.
Which brings me to today. Yesterday was not a banner day for me: after two weeks of being home with no leads on the job search, I've finally become impatient with things. See, I'm a man of routine. And for all my bitching in this blog about how much I hated my old routine, I've found it's surprisingly difficult to live without one. Not to mention how challenging it is to suffice on one's expecting lifestyle without any kind of regular income. I'd imagined I would be able to let my stash hold me up for most of the summer, but I've got plans far more ambitious than that--as a result, this kid needs money, big time.
So today, I decided to make a few changes, a few active choices that would, hopefully, allow me to enjoy a greater quality of life over the course of my job hunt. For starters, I decided that I would be taking a ride up to my local Borders to inquire about the possibility of employment. Because I figure if I can't find a job in publishing at this very moment, it might not hurt to have a job working for a bookstore when the publishers come a-callin'. So that's on my to-do list effective immediately.
And it was this notion of a to-do list that's set me on this newfound path. I discovered a short time ago that I'm not the only one in my corner of the blogosphere looking to make changes. And while I certainly won't steal her idea, I've been inspired by the notion of tangible progress to the point where I feel I want to make some tangible goals of my own.
At which point I realized that, despite all my wavering and whimpering and whining, I've actually been astonishingly productive over the last few weeks--and all of that productivity has been in the service of things that have been goal-oriented all along. My attempt to work at a bookstore, for instance, was something I told myself I'd start considering around July 4th. My job hunt, in a perfect world, is the kind of thing I'd like to see realized by my birthday. These are tangible deadlines for tangible goals, and I'm working towards them.
Then I extrapolated further and realized that many of my other goals have been accompanied by deadlines as well. In the absence of regular employment, I've been working on my creative projects--two in particular. My manuscript comes and goes in waves, as I don't feel like I want to rush it for the sake of getting it done. I believe in it, and I believe it will come when it does and I just need to be ready to get the inspiration down. But the other endeavor is my screenplay, an idea hatched near the end of last semester and taken up in earnest by a collaborator that has proven to be not only incredibly creative and funny, but also exceptionally diligent and persistent. And, truth be told, it's her belief in the project that has driven me to invest serious time and thought into it.
Once we realized that we were on to something, and that we were creating material for a viable project that was taking shape faster than either of us probably could have imagined, we set some deadlines as well. By July 4th, we want a sketch of the plot in its entirety, whether storyboarded or just plotted out in paragraphs. Each scene, with at least some vague idea of how we get from one to the next to the next and so on through the whole story. And by my birthday, September 9th, we want a first draft of the entire script done.
And the craziest part about all of this is that, no matter how many times I look at these dates and these goals, I can't help but say to myself, "Yes, you are going to meet that goal." By my birthday, I believe our screenplay will be done.
So on top of all of these goals, which I will of course keep you, loyal readers, posted on, I will also be renewing my weight-loss project. Last year, you'll remember, I took the baseball season as my guide and managed to lose twenty pounds between April and October. I was pleased with what I accomplished, and thrilled that I've kept it off since then. But, like I said, this is a time for action, not complacency. I'm not satisfied with what I weigh now, and now that I've proven to myself that I can do it, I want to do it again. Thus I've tacked on another goal: by the end of the summer, I want to lose another twenty pounds. And to give myself added incentive, I've set myself to the task of dropping at least fifteen by the time I go to Chicago in August for my dear friends' wedding. It will not only make me feel better, but it will perhaps even give me the chance to buy some sexy new clothes and show off The New Hotness™--coming soon!
But I can't act without the tiny, piddling audience I've somehow been able to maintain over the years. So I will be devoting myself to far more regularity in my posting as well, beginning with this one. It's time to stop talking and start doing, to get myself on the path towards the life I want to live, rather than sitting back and letting it happen in front of me. I'm already doing it, setting myself in the right direction, and the time has come to pack up the old camp, follow the trail, and see where it leads me.
And I'll get right to it, just as soon as I finish this episode of Lost.
...what? I've got five seasons to watch before the new season in January. That's a goal and a deadline too, you know!
posted by Dave at 6/16/2009 06:26:00 PM
2 Comments:
If you need fitness logging software, I'm a huge fan of DailyBurn. And it has some nice accountability measures in there - sends you a report card every week in e-mail based on how much you exercised and met nutrition goals. I can send you an invite :-)
Sweet! I just signed up. Let me get an accurate reading on the scale in the morning and I'll put in all my data. Keep me honest!
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