well, lookit there; it’s been a little more than a year since my last post. i’m not surprised. writing for work — and in such a different vein — eats up the room for writing like this. so it goes!

lately (and by “lately” i mean “since august or september) i have been thinking about My Schedule.

now that i’m fully self-determined again, or even more so than before?, i want to establish something repeatable. i also, now that i’ve moved back home, want to not only work on my dissertation — my primary work — i also want to pick up some of the activity-threads i put down when i moved away. plus i want to prioritize physical conditioning: if i can’t choose to work out under these expansive conditions, who am i kidding?!!

and yet.

i’ll feel tired, and struggle to discern how to honor that. i mean: is it from upping my workouts in this older body, which just needs a little more time? is it subtle hormonal sleep disturbance, which i can flow with, overall? is it avoidance? or boredom? (yeah, that’s happening and would take a post to untangle….) what if i just took a day off??

plus there’s a… moodiness? stubbornness? that kicks when my schedule gets set in, with little variation. i’m watching a version of this with a friend and phd colleague right now — she also went to my alma mater, and so it’s an intriguing mirror of “are we ALL like this??” (suspected answer: yep!)

she and i get together weekly for digital co-working. the idea is that we work the same two hours on dissertation stuff, so that tin can goes down the road a little. but she has more keep-the-lights-on outside stuff to juggle than i do, plus some “good for the CV!” projects that are now hitting deadlines.

which means that, thus far, i think she’s done something diss-related once out of five? times.

but!

that’s not my pigeon <smiles>. i have been in the place where Something Else is pressing my brain so hard i can’t see; i get that the only thing, at that point, is to lift the pressure. the time she and i meet is a box that doesn’t hold, say, grocery shopping. which is worth doing.

plus

we don’t start at exactly the same time. nor finish at the same time. nor even go the same length of time. it is a commitment. we meet it. and we make it work through its flexibility.

and so

it’s “giving me furiously to think” about how i hold my own whole-week schedule.

i have a location routine now. four days on the austin seminary campus, one at home.

more centrally for the long haul, though, is that i’ve chosen to bracket 10 hours (five 2-hour blocks) for dissertation work each week. four of which land at the start of each campus day.

and (the genesis for this musing) i’m choosing to keep two swimming blocks in every week. there are two other exercise elements i have on my calendar, yet i’m designating them as add-ons. the swimming ticks more boxes for me.

(not to mention the physical therapy exercises which are now about as essential as breakfast to my health and movement. :/ )

**

i’m leaning into “blocks” and not “times”,

because i suspect my doing will be more resilient this way. i can acknowledge my “you can’t make me” tendencies… which are damn persistent, let me tell you!… while avoiding the panicky sensation that accumulates when i blow myself off too many times.

these are better promises for me to make to myself. ones that i think i can trust i will keep.

i can acknowledge a Mood, and still say: ok, then when? and write that down.

an undergirding element i haven’t mentioned: i’ve already built a color-coded block schedule for my basic week.

with this i know where those two-hour chunks live. they’re blue and purple.

and i know to put exercise in the afternoon (green zones)… i’ve been experimenting with that since i started my mdiv. late afternoons i will deliver on. other times, less so.

why 5 blocks and not 8? two reasons. one: i need flexibility room, see above. two: i promised myself when i moved home that i could do things that were not school. which means i must leave time for them to happen… and not let all blocks fall into the dissertation’s vacuum-like maw.

(i told my dissertation coach two weeks ago i had 8, and now i’m smacking my forehead. because that was a weird sort of lie, and i don’t even know why i did that.)

**

last thursday night my coaching cohort met synchronously to plan november, a tricky month since it secretly loses about a week.

its timing took over a swim slot, though.

never the less! i will be swimming in my friday green slot (in fact, the pilates class got cancelled again).

block-level commitments. set at the minimum. with room to expand.

here’s hoping i’ve got something i’ll keep to…

…and that will sustain me.