One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

It's really frustrating always playing catch-up. Always running out of time. Yeah, I like to talk about time management and scheduling things so everything gets done, but sometimes, it's not about the time. The time is always there, it's the energy, the motivation, and the creativity that don't always show up.

Photo by: Melanie Davies, Flickr

I'm one of those people who gets really excited about something, and gives up on it or forgets about it really quickly. It happens with my writing, it's happened with this blog, and a million other things. It's mostly a lack of discipline, something I've been hard at work to change over the past year or so, but there's a point at which discipline can't overcome the block. Discipline can push through low energy or fatigue, discipline can even push through a lack of creativity, but if it's motivation that's the issue, discipline can often get beat down.

Motivation is the driving force. If you don't have it, you're SOL. You gotta want it. Anything you don't want gets put on the back burner. Right now, I want to work on my new writing project for Camp Nano. I don't really want to write up my review for Pacific Rim for my other blog. I don't really want to write blog posts for my wellness blog (even though I already took two weeks off), and I don't really want to sit down and apply for jobs.

While I technically have the time, energy, and ability to do all those things, the motivation isn't there. Or, perhaps more accurately, the motivation isn't strong enough to beat out the reasons why I don't want to do those things. I don't want to write a review on a movie that I didn't really want to see in the first place, even though it was quite good. I don't want to keep putting time and energy and thought into blog posts that nobody reads. I don't want to sit there and customize applications and responses to job postings when I know I won't get a call-back or even the courtesy of a canned email response to let me know I didn't get it on 99% of them.

I don't want to project the idea that I've lost hope. I haven't. It's just really frustrating to keep putting myself out there, with my writing, my blogs, my resume, and otherwise, and getting no response. Hardly even a negative response to any of it. Just apathy. Ignorance. Indirect dismissal. And silence. Even with this blog, I know not very many people actually sit down and read it, let alone care about what I have to say, but the writing is cathartic. The honesty of how stuff affects me perhaps more so.

What's most frustrating is that feeling of being stuck. Stuck in yet another job I don't love, stuck writing stuff nobody reads, stuck trying new things and ideas that don't pan out, stuck financially. I always think of that saying "If you don't like your (job/life/body/etc.), change it." It's supposed to be inspiring, but mostly it feels like an accusation. Like I'm not trying to change it. Or worse, that I did try and failed to make a difference.

It's not easy initiating and following through on big life changes. It takes time. And maybe I'm just impatient. I have made progress on some changes, but it's really difficult to apply that level of discipline and focus to all the changes I want to make, and all the goals I want to achieve. Too often, I feel like I have too many goals, too many things I want, too many balls in the air. I need to lighten the load and make my to-do list more manageable. The only problem is I don't know what to cross off the list.

When life gives you lemons, egg life's house.

Because payback's a bitch.

I Don't Know What to Title This Post. How About I Call It "Edgar?"

My blog tour is over! (Almost.) The posts have all been published, the comments are all in, the winner will be announced soon, and I've written the recap post already, but I still need to draw the winner and add the post to my website. So, nearly, but not quite finished. I had a lot of fun with this thing! Was it worth the money? I'd say I got what I paid for. If I had been able to afford more, I might have gotten more out of it, but for what I spent, I'd say it was about right.

I'd say the biggest issue I had was time. Putting together 10 posts and recording an audio interview in a span of two months, on top of everything else I'm working on, is a lot of work! I also wish I'd had a better mix of interviews and guest posts. Guest posts are much harder, but if I can have some time to work on them, I can really turn out some good writing, which is partly what I was hoping for. I wanted people to get a feel for my writing more than for me as a person, thinking maybe if they liked my writing style, they'd like the book, too. Doing the interviews was fun, but I think three or four probably could have covered everything. I think I ended up with 7 (out of 11 posts total).

Still, I had fun and it was really great to hear some feedback about the book, the excerpts, the blurb, etc. I would still do things differently the next time around, but why do we fall? So we can learn how to pick ourselves up. I even got a 5-star review from one of the tour hosts, so that was awesome! It came near the end of the tour, and since none of the other hosts had decided to read the book and do a review, I hadn't expected it. It was a wonderful surprise to wake up to that morning!

Aside from the tour, I've been working my butt off trying to catch up on my health blog project. Since I just converted it a couple months ago, it's going to take me some time to rebrand the site to the world and to my existing followers, but I am getting a little traffic to site, which wasn't happening when it was just a product-based site. A lot of the visits are probably me as I develop the site and add new posts, but there are a few unique visitors, so that's good. I've got about a week and a half's worth of posts scheduled out as of this evening, so I can have a little time to redistribute my efforts elsewhere, but not much.

I'm still working on the story I worked on for April's Camp Nano, and I'm REALLY hoping I can finish it by the end of the month. Ambitious? Of course. But, if I can do 50k words in November alone, I certainly should be able to do another 20-30k in the 22 days left in June! I know I'm on the right track with it, but with all these other projects to work, and especially catch up, on, I haven't had the time to crank it out. If I sat down and worked on this only for a week, even with work, I could make some serious progress.

I have every damn intention of getting back to Always Happy to Entertain You soon, but I've got so much to catch up on and I want to restructure how I do the posts that it's going to take some real motivation and maybe a kick in the pants to get me back into it. Unfortunately, it's easy to break from right now since so many of the shows are on break for the summer. I'm considering moving the site to self-hosted WordPress soon (not the other WordPress I was bitching about last week), but that won't be for another few weeks.

Aside from that, I'm really financially frustrated at the moment. I was expecting to have a little more money coming in starting this month, and it turns out that's not going to happen now, so now I'm trying to figure something else out, and find the time to do so. I'm getting close to my savings goal for a new (used) car, but it's the little expenditures that are becoming a problem.

A lot of them are "luxury" expenses, like going to the movies and getting small things for myself like books or jewelry (all under $15 or $20, I assure you), so technically I shouldn't be complaining about not being able to buy that X Files memorabilia I want or that new book that comes out next week. I've been on a budget for a long time, and I don't have a problem budgeting or taking my time and saving up for things I want but don't necessarily need. I just really was expecting to have more money to budget by now, and knowing I don't means I have to adjust things and it's going to take a little time for me to come to terms with that.

In any case, even with the tour over, I've got plenty to keep me busy during the weeks and months to come!

Everybody's working for the weekend!

Publishing, Allergies, and a Bit of Bad News

My dad's cat, Willis. Rest in peace, buddy.

    I've been saying how busy I am for weeks, but it's finally coming together: the book will be released March 28th.
    Other than that, I'm trying to catch up on some other stuff I've let slide while working on my book, like blogging. However, once again, life intrudes.
    Last week, my dad's cat died very suddenly. While he didn't like my cat, he was a very sweet kitty and passed too soon. We think he had an aneurysm, and there would have been nothing we could have done for him because of how quickly it happened, but it was very upsetting because he was relatively young for a cat. My cat (aka The Furball) is happy to have the run of the house again, but it's very strange not to have our other cat around.
    Then, this week, I realized just how close spring is: my allergies kicked in! And they didn't just crop up, they returned with a vengeance. I have been miserable, blowing my nose, sneezing in threes and sometimes fours, and wiping away tears from watery eyes. Not only does the end of my nose look like I rubbed sandpaper on it for two hours, the top of my lip went bright red from all the moisture being rubbed off. I've never had allergies this bad, and to boot, my usual medicine isn't cutting it. It dried my nose a little, but it did nothing for the itchy nose/eyes. I started a different medicine on Friday, and it was an improvement, but it still was not providing me with the kind of clear-headedness and sneeze-relief I've come to expect from allergy medication. I switched to Allegra yesterday, and what a difference! I still don't feel 100%, but I'm about 90%, so that's close enough for me. It's 24 hour too, so I don't have to keep remembering to take it during the day, and it really has knocked out most of my symptoms, so that's a huge relief.
    While I'm really excited to be wrapping up editing and publishing my (third!) book, I may be even more excited to get back to writing again! I feel like I've been editing for ages, and the only thing I've written since I started this editing project is blog posts. It's like my creativity is has been accumulating for the past couple months and it's ready to be set loose.
    What this means is that, as soon as the book is finalized and released, I will probably start six different stories in the next few weeks, and I will probably only finish one of them. If that. I'm looking forward to it though. As much as I'm looking forward to getting back to writing--I've got about three stories cooking in my head as it is--I'm also thinking about the two books I wrote last fall, prior to and during Nanowrimo. Both science fiction. One maybe involves more crime/drama than hardcore science fiction, but because the main storyline focuses on a project that is science fiction-y in nature, I'm still calling it sci-fi for now. I really enjoyed those stories, possibly because they're so different from anything I've ever written before, and I'm really looking forward to working on them again.

The new book cover.
Minus my author name ;)
Thoughts?

    However, that won't be for a while. I think I want to write, exclusively, for the next few months, and then I will consider getting back into editing around July or August. I'd like to put out another book by the end of the year, but I haven't decided which one yet.
    (I cheated and started writing last night. It feels like cheating because I haven't completely wrapped up my other book yet, but it was awesome. I don't know if I'll get anywhere with it, but just putting together character descriptions, a very rough outline, and writing a page or two before bed felt amazing after so many months of just editing!)
    Anyway, a lot's been happening and a lot is going to happen in the next few weeks (at least I hope so). I'm hoping that I'll have good news to share about my book, but we'll have to wait and see what the initial responses are.
    This is what publishing feels like, whether you submit to a house or try to do it yourself:

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs
and developing our wings on the way down.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Getting in Tune

  No, I'm not talking about my musical skills, which are pretty limited, though I'm trying to change that. I'm talking about perspective, my continued theme from last week. I have spent several months now working on my goals, while still sticking with the status quo which allows me to earn money while I'm trying to get the rest of this stuff in order. You gotta make some sacrifices (e.g. selling out) to get what you really want (e.g. making a living doing what I enjoy).
    Sidenote/bonus: the inspiration for my post title, and arguably the greatest band in rock and roll history: THE WHO.

    I'll admit, I've become a little despondent about my progress. I'm still enjoying working on my own projects, but I feel like my present track has hit a plateau in terms of progress toward my ultimate goals. It's been very frustrating to have the feeling that I've worked so hard and accomplished so much, while having so little to show for it.
    I feel like I need to revise my strategy, but I feel like everything is running at such a fast pace right now that I don't have quite enough time to reevaluate everything I've been working on to find a way to do it better. It's extremely frustrating to know that you're on a plateau in terms of results and productivity and not having the time to be able to improve it. If I were to stop work on these projects completely to strategize, I'd fall far enough behind that even if I came up with a better strategy, it'd take a lot longer to implement and might even undo some of the progress I've made so far.
    I have scaled back my work on a few things because I was on the verge of burn-out a few weeks ago, and it seems to have helped me get back on track a little bit, but I'm still not where I want to be with these projects. I believe in hard work, and I know nothing comes easy. I just wish I didn't also have to deal with everybody else around me trampling on my goals so that I can become their version of a productive member of society. I'm working on that in my own way with my projects; it's just a process that takes longer, and while more fulfilling, can take a long time to be lucrative, if it ever is.

    The argument against me is: you have to be realistic. You have to have a car. You have to have a place to live. You have to eat. Granted, I do have to eat, but I don't absolutely have to have a car. And if you want to get right down to it, I'd probably survive even if I didn't have a place to live.
    Case in point: I just saw a post about award-winning actors who were once homeless. And then they worked really hard for a few years, caught a break, worked really hard some more, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, etc.
    This was inspiring to me. Not that I want to deliberately live out of my car until such a point as I'm successful with my writing, but if these people made it to where they are after living out of their cars or at a bus station or whatever, there's hope for the rest of us with dreams. There are no hand-outs. We all have to put in the work, the perseverance, and the time to get to where we want to be.
    Sometimes that means we have to make sacrifices, and sometimes it means we have to do things that our families and friends disapprove of in order to achieve our dreams. Of course, looking like Halle Berry probably wouldn't hurt.

Success is simply getting up one more time than you fall down. 

(I attribute this to a wall-sign in Jerry Maguire,
but I'm not sure where it came from originally.)

My Belated Holiday

It's been an extremely short December! I feel like it's lasted forever, and at the same time, I can't believe it's two days before Christmas! I JUST got my holiday shopping done yesterday, but I already have to exchange something because I bought the wrong item and I need to get photo paper because photos were a part of my gift. I know I have photo paper here somewhere, but I cannot find it. That's what happens when you move in and out some many times. Stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

I've been working on editing my new book to publish and I've hit a snag--I'm starting to wonder whether I need to cut out a character because I'm not sure how much they actually help the plot. I just skimmed the rest of the story last night, and I think I need to straighten out some of my themes a little better. Right now it looks like a really long run-on sentence/stream of consciousness thing.

The holidays snuck up on me this year. I was so prepared last year--I had everything bought and shipped weeks before Christmas, but this year, I was so busy, I lost track of the time and had to do all my shopping 3 days before Christmas! I don't think that's ever happened to me before. It's also the first year I didn't put the Christmas tree up.

Even when I was living on my own, I came back home and put the tree up at my dad's house, but I lost track of time and my dad ended up putting it up! It actually looks nicer I think--I usually get carried away with the ornaments because we have so many pretty ones.

I am getting started on my New Years Resolutions though, though I'm trying to think of them more as goals rather than set-in-stone resolutions.

So far:

1. Edit/Publish 3 books next calendar year
2. Write a new novel/screenplay (haven't decided which)
3. Write a children's story
4. Lose weight (unoriginal, I know)
5. Find a way to earn money at something I enjoy (earning money from my writing or my books would be nice, but if I found a regular job that I liked and that paid decent enough, that'd be all right too)
6. Win Nano again :)
7. Plus a few other things I've been wanting to do for a few years now, but haven't had the time/motivation to teach myself to do or the money to have someone else teach me...

Well, the world didn't end the other day. I didn't really expect it to. But with all the terrible things that have happened around the world and especially around the country lately, I'm hoping 2013 will usher in a new year filled with more positivity, peace, and compassion. I'm hoping these things go in cycles, and that 2013 is the beginning of a new cycle with more ups than downs.

New Year's state of mind.

Losing Time Or Making Time

  My dad likes to say that age is nothing but a number. I think that's something older people say because they don't like to feel old. I think age is a lot more than a number. Sometimes it can indicate maturity, legality, and other times, it's just a social identity that shows we relate to our peers.
    I feel distinctly old today, being it's my birthday. While 24 isn't a very big number to some people, it seems pretty big to me. I'm leaving my early twenties for my mid-twenties, and I feel like this is a milestone in my young life. 23 seemed young enough to still play the college-aged young person card, and 24 seems like the real line between youth and adulthood.
    I have been really struggling with the desire to become independent and self-sufficient and the desire to remain somewhat innocent, footloose, and fancy-free. On the one hand, I want to be financially independent, but on the other, I would really enjoy having a little more free time than a full-time job allows. Not so I can go to the brewery every day or watch TV even more than I do already, but because there are things that I want to do that I don't have time for right now. Like this blog.
    I want to have more time to write. I want to have more time to read. And yes, it would be nice to have more time to go to the movies or watch them at home. But it's more than that. I want to have time to cook for myself, shop for groceries more than once or twice a month. I want to take walks and do yoga. I want to spend time with my friends and my family. Plus a million other things on my to-do list. And I feel like right now, I'm budgeting my time as thinly as I'm budgeting my money.
    I feel like I'm missing out on some of the things I should be enjoying, some of the things I think I have a right to enjoy, because I don't have time to enjoy them. Most people would diagnose this as having my priorities mixed up. If you have your priorities straight, you can always make time for everything. I don't think this is always true. There are a finite number of hours in a given week, and there is only enough room for a portion of everything you want to accomplish. We end up sacrificing so much of what we want to do in favor of what we are obligated to do.
    It isn't easy juggling your wants with your obligations, especially when time or money is the constraint. But the only way to achieve your goals and make your wants become a regular part of your schedule is to say yes to yourself and those wants instead of no, procrastinating and making excuses why you can't. You still may not be able to get all of them in every single time, but you can at least make the effort.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

Being A Little OCD Sucks Sometimes

  I spent the last couple days sorting through 410 articles for our new site at work, trying to sort them into categories and find relevant tags for all of them. It covers a lot of ground, so the lists got pretty long. I think I put together a pretty decent one though, one that was comprehensive but not exhaustive. I took it upon myself to put it together because it was starting to look like the alternative was another brainstorming session that probably wouldn't yield too many finalized results. And I guess it went over well, for the most part.
    The problem with this one is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, I think, and everyone has their own idea of how to sort the content out. But, being that I'm the one who's going to be managing the content and probably the one who will have to go through and categorize and tag a lot of the content we currently have, My idea makes the most sense. I don't think that's immodest or stubborn, I think it's just realistic. I have a good overall understanding of how the content stands currently, and I think the way I've planned the organization of it makes the most sense for what we have on hand, as well as being a good place for us to move forward when we get new content in.
    I'm not saying my way or the highway, but kind of. When you have a website of this magnitude, there needs to be a process in place for handling certain areas, like content, as we move forward. If I create a process, I know I can stick to it. All that's left is making sure whoever comes in at any point to help with the content knows how I do it and does it the same way so that everything on the site is uniform and nothing gets confused or messed up because somebody didn't follow procedure.
    I am aware of how neurotic and OCD this sounds, but I am a little neurotic and OCD. When I have a job, I find a way to do it the best, most efficient and most organized way possible. It's one thing for the articles themselves to have different content--of course they would--they're written by a bunch of different people with different writing styles. It's quite another for them to be SEO'd and formatted differently because the people we have in-house are not all doing it the same way. I think that looks sloppy. And if I'm in charge of the content, you better believe it won't look sloppy for long.
    So, I may be compulsive and excessively organized, but it pays off from time to time. My high school psych teacher always used to tell us there was a method to her madness, which I always found terribly amusing because a psych teacher talking about madness is pretty funny/ironic, and I completely agree. I may do things the hard way and I may dot every single I and cross every last T, but there is always a reason for everything I do when it comes to this stuff. I don't do things without thinking, and while maybe my solutions or processes aren't perfect every time, I always have a very reasonable explanation for having done things that way. I don't think this makes me inflexible, it just keeps me organized.

One more person says "a whole nother" and I think I'll scream.

What are your little pet peeves, idiosyncrasies and neuroses? 

Or are you so easy-going that nothing bothers you?

Explain in the comments. ;)

Overwhelmed But Flattered

  I was taken to an almost impromptu lunch yesterday (meaning I didn't know about it until that morning) and offered what might be considered a promotion. Good news, right? I was scared shitless the entire time they were talking about it. It felt kind of like an ambush, as I had no idea that that's what the lunch would be about. My coworker and I were both taken out and offered a similar position, added responsiblity, added stress, and a pay increase, though no mention was made as to how much that would be.
    My one year review was today, it was positive, and I did get a raise (yay!). But my concern was not even really how much the raise would have been for. It was more the added stress and added responsiblity that I was not sure I was ready for. It would be additional content management for our new site, which I was expecting, and the possibility of training an intern and supervising them directly, both of which I know I can handle. The thing I was wavering on had to do with the "project management" thing, which was the title that came with the promotion. Part of this position would have included me having to manage my coworkers' tasks and check on their progress on those tasks and projects, on top of doing my own task and time management. I don't mind checking in with people when my bosses are out of town, but I wouldn't want to do it as part of my regular job. I can't bug people about their jobs. I can't be the nag. I can't write on the whiteboard what they're supposed to do. And I can't sit there and tell them it has to be done by Friday because, honestly, who am I? Unless I can fire them if it's not done, who am I? Their coworker, who is younger than most of them, that is trying to keep them on track? I'm fairly certain that at least two of them would feel extremely pissed off about me in that position, not jealous, necessarily, but angry that a person of my age and experience--which is still pretty limited if you measure it by time--was put into a position of this caliber.
    We're a small company, and I've known for a long time that they've wanted to put somebody else in a semi-supervisory position to free up my bosses' time. I've had a job for one year. All the experince I have, the majority has come during this one year. I just don't feel ready to do all the work that that new position would have required. I don't feel like I have the personality to manage that many people's tasks. I can manage myself, and maybe one other person who would be doing the same kind of work as me, but five additional people? Plus my own workload managing content? It was just too overwhelming.
    Don't get me wrong, I was flattered as hell, but intimidated more. I know how much confidence my bosses have in me, and while it's appreciated, I know that a job like that would not just put me close to a mental breakdown, it might actually CAUSE one. So, without mental health benefits, or general wellness benefits (anti-stress benefits, to be precise, massages and the like), I cannot sign on for a job where I have no idea what the workload or stress load is going to be, only that it will be more. I am already stressed and I already work hard. More seems like I might be setting myself up to fail at this point. And maybe in a few months, once I get my bearing with this new site, I might feel up to taking on a little more, but until then, I'd like to have some idea of what I'm getting into. And in the meantime, I'm very happy with what I'm doing now, and I look forward to taking on the new challenges within that particular aspect of my job.
    I did get a positive review, which I was very pleased about. In light of the fact that it was my one year review, I went out of my way to put together a list of all the major projects, tasks, and writing assignments I've completed over the past year. There were a lot. Even I was surprised. I have written so much, and completed a fair number of major projects as well, and it was kind of cool to see them all in one place, rather than spread out over so many weekly activity reports. It was sort of as a defense against any poor performance things that might have come up, though thankfully, none did.
    It's strange to think I've been at the same company, and to think about how far I've come from what I was doing this time last year to now, but it's cool. I've never had a job this long, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can accomplish in the next year.

Happy work birthday to me... Happy work birthday to me... :)

What are some of your accomplishments in the past year? Either work-related or in your personal life.

Do you have any goals for the next 12 months?

Tell me about it in the comments below.

Commute or Telecommute - That Is The Question

  If you haven't noticed, and the only way you couldn't have is if you read Insistent and Persistent in an RSS reader rather than directly on the site (though I hope if you do that, you at least visit the site occasionally...), I put a new header at the top of the home page.
    I know the design quality is poor, but what do you expect from a philosophy major with only MS Paint as a tool instead of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator? My hope is that it will bring a little color to the page :)
    In other news, I got to thinking about working from home today after I read an article on Thought Catalog about the topic. I don't think I'd want to work 40 hours a week from home, because, honestly, I would start buying cookies and ice cream and I'd probably gain another five pounds every month or so. But the thought of working a few hours a week from home is appealing. Maybe two half days or one full day. I wouldn't be interrupted with meetings or drama or crises, and I wouldn't have to drown out my coworkers with my Walkman.
    On the other hand, I wonder whether that is really a good solution to whatever stress or overwhelmed feelings I have, and I know that it probably isn't. Working from home might help relieve some stress, but there are other, better ways to deal with it.
    One is to stop eating so much crap. We eat out so often at work that the only motivation I have to eat out less is financial. I am desperately trying to either eat yesterday's leftovers for lunch or to bring a sandwich and fruit for lunch at least two or three times a week. Also, I really need to quit drinking so much soda, and probably stop having more than the occasional beer (though after the infamous tequila shots incident, I've been damn near abstinent with almost all alcohol).
    The main thing I need to do is stop interneting so much! Of course, I wouldn't cut back on my blogging, but I spend way too much time reading and researching online when I get home, especially considering I spend a lot of my workday online doing the exact same thing. TV is a de-stressor, and reading books are a de-stressor, and writing is a de-stressor for me, but reading news and ads and polls online are all probably doing my mental state more harm than good.
    The last thing I need to do to help my stress levels is to be more active. I'm not a runner or a bicyclist or a tennis player or even a stairmaster user. Because those suck. They're painful, they're not fun, and they make me feel worse, not better, about myself after. Usually because my lung capacity fails me almost immediately. Yoga is the only form of exercise I can stand, but I always give up on it after a while, usually due to time constraints (or since I left school, financial constraints for going to classes). I just have to keep reminding myself that I don't hate it and then make time to do it, which is always hard. Especially with all the interneting.
    My eventual goal was always to be a writer, one that makes money from her writing and can actually make a living at it. But working from home seems to me right now to be just another way to become a recluse. And I like people. Some of them, anyway.

Write More. Read More. Plan More. Critique Less.

Would you work from home if you could? Would you miss anything about going to a workplace?

Discuss it in the comments below! 

No Time Left For You

Last year, I had too much time on my hands. Much of which was spent surfing the Internet, looking and applying for jobs, playing online games, reading articles--some with merit, some without--and watching a lot of television. But 2011 is the year for too little time. I don't think I've ever been this busy except during my college prep type courses in high school. Even my undergraduate years in college didn't keep me this busy this often--just once a semester near and during finals week.
    I suppose this proves everything is cyclical, and maybe 2012 will give me a little more time to work with. But in the meantime, coping with exhaustion for about 75% of my week is frustrating, because I can't do much about it. I try to go bed earlier, but consequently, I don't finish what I need to finish.
    It's an uncomfortable situation, trying to decide which is your highest priority: school or work (although in my case, it's both), a social life, or sleep.

In a perfect world, all should be doable simultaneously. 

    A person should have enough time to sustain a social life, get enough rest, and do their school/work related assignments, tasks or projects, while still having a little time for herself to read, watch TV, blog, eat three meals a day, et cetera. When there isn't enough time for these basic human necessities (although TV may not be a necessity, I think you can agree that time to decompress and get your mind off all your other worries is), something has gone horribly wrong. It isn't right that people should have to decide which of these things is more important--or worse, which of these things are expendable. More often than not, sleep gets sacrificed first. Sometimes the social life disappears or wanes, but sleep tends to be the first to go. And yet, sleep, and its relativity to good health, is probably the most important of the three. 

    Normally, I'd be the first to say:

"Well, if you can't do it all, you're just not managing your time very well." 

    But even those people with excellent time management skills can fail to distribute their time fairly to each of these areas of life. If I separate each of them out, I can manage my time quite well, and arrange it so that each one gets its due attention, and I can get everything done that needs to be done, on time, and correctly (in regard to school/work related tasks). However, stacking them all together and sorting three things out together makes it much more difficult. I can make schedules; I can set timers for when I should finish tasks; I can arrive at social engagements on time and leave early; I can even add another 15 or 20 minutes to my sleep time by setting the alarm later. Still, all put together, something always ends up taking longer than expected and it throws the whole deal out of whack. 

    Lack of time is a vicious cycle because the more you try to catch up, the more your time passes faster and slips away from you, like trying to grasp at water--it just slides through the openings between your fingers. While some people would probably say that if I'm that busy, why I am spending this time writing a blog that hardly anyone will read? Because writing is one of those things that I do for myself, and without it, I might indeed have more time, but less sanity. So, I'm going to keep the writing, even if I lose a little time to do more homework or, unfortunately, get more sleep.

Dreams and sleep may not be economically productive, 

but the cultivation of wellness and intellect makes them worth it.