Budget my time

Lately I’ve been feeling out of control of my time.

I need to set up some regularity in what I can expect a week to hold for me.

Every week:

I need to go shopping for groceries.
I need to go to the library, bank, and post office.
I need to maintain the house by doing certain chores.
I need to exercise.
I need to attend choir practice.
I need to open mail, pay bills, and complete important paperwork.
I want to visit with friends in 3D life.
I want to send cheers/answer posts for 43T.
I want to write original posts on certain goals on 43T.
I want to answer e-mails.
I want to write/send postcards.
I want to watch certain TV shows.
I want to work on craft or art projects.

Right now I’m only accomplishing my wants regularly, and my needs are getting squashed and pushed aside. I have no predictable time when anything gets done, so I pretty much stress over doing EVERYTHING all the time, and feel like I never really have time to do it all.

Of course that’s a lie. I have plenty of time. It’s just that I am frittering it away in odd amounts with no PLAN.

I’m not sure I will stick to a plan once I make one. My track record for sticking to internally selected goals is pretty poor. But at least I want to identify what I SHOULD be doing, to stay balanced. I feel out of balance right now. Plus, having no plan dishonors my love of order and predictability. I’ve been dealing with uncertainty by avoiding it completely. I need to start dealing with it by HANDLING things that scare, bore, or bother me in quantifiable chunks so I can be emotionally prepared to handle it well. I don’t want to keep letting things slip away undone.

I want to start taking actual STEPS to handle my life, rather than sitting back and dreaming about it getting better on its own. Life doesn’t HAVE to be as chaotic as I’ve made it. Even allowing a certain flexibility in my “appointments”, I should still have some clue WHEN each of my daily and weekly goals can be expected to get handled.

I’ve just taught my daughter how to budget her money. I need to budget my time.

“done” this is too strong of an indicator, but I’m more careful than I once was. I’ve realized there’s a lot of time to get things done, and a lot of time that was wasted watching the Simpsons, etc.