Busy

I almost feel bad at times that I don't get to write more.  This fact sort of got me going and made me start thinking again.  Why do I do all that I do?  Why do I do anything?  Why do I feel I need to cram as much as I possibly can in to each and every day at the expense of sleep and eating properly.

I can break things down a little into different categories, work, family, farm stuff, teaching, cleaning, eating, reading, hobbies, and so on into inifinity.  Some things get pushed out, like watching TV.  I will watch movies or TV shows on DVD, but that is pretty much my limit.  Most of the time due to my erratic work schedule I am not able to commit a particular time and day of the week to watch a show and I am too cheap to buy a TIVO or pay for satellite TV.  I was asked to join the local Lions club in town.  I told them I would go to a meeting and then never showed up.  Then I feel bad because I said I would.

On top of all of this there I things I would like to learn to do.  I would like to learn spanish, I want to learn how to make brooms out of broom corn, to be more organized, to just be a better person.

It tends to drive me crazy at times, then when I do have things I know need to be done that can be put off I do things that I really don't need to do.  For example tonight I am writing and should have gone to bed because I have to get up early in the morning.  I worked for an hour and a half at cleaning out my shed instead of writing test questions for the final in the class I teach.  I just find countless ways to do nothing when I have things that need to get done.  I procrastinate until the last minute and then rush through.

I have tried to set priorities, to make some things more important than others.  What I want to spend more time doing I end up losing interest in and then don't want to finish it.  I end up putting most of my effort into my job because I make money doing it.  I enjoy parts of it, probably the people part of it and not the mundane details that have to get done each day. 

I look at motivation to do things, I've accomplished many things in my life that had nothing to do with anything but my own motivation to do them.  I don't think that is the issue either.  The same is true of just about everything, I tend to seek out different things or activities and then when I've mastered them I get bored with them and drift to something else.

I don't know what drives this tendency towards mediocaty.  I suppose it's fear to some point.  I imagine some has to do with having a bizzare work schedule, trying to be more things to too many people.  I sometimes feel that if I could just quit doing one thing or another it would free up time to do all the other activities that I do.  For example I used to golf on a somewhat regular basis.  The last time I golfed was six years ago.

Someday I'll sort this all out and find a way to feel less busy and still be active in many things.  It's one of those things that I sit and stew about and about six months or a year later some sort of idea pops into my head that sort of solves the problem.  If only there was some way days could be made longer...