A Change in Schedule

My family and I celebrated my 60th birthday last Friday. More about that, at "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming Hits the Big Six-Oh," Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 1, 2011).

"It's not the age ... it's the attitude."

"Age is just a number. (A high one in your case - but just a number.)"

As my father used to say, "and a good time was had by all."

Time, Energy, and Getting a Grip

I've noticed that I can't get away with keeping crazy hours the way I could 30 or 40 years ago. And the my recent stint as company gofer at the Catholic Marketing Network trade show was unexpectedly exhausting.

I've decided that I'll just have to face facts: I'm no longer 17. I'm not even a 40-year-old kid any more.

And even in my 20s, there was only so much I could cram into each 24 hours.

New Weekly Schedule

That's why I've decided to make a regular weekly schedule for three of my blogs, including this one, and spend the rest of my time catching up on several decades of backlog.

You'll find A Catholic Citizen in America's new weekly schedule under - what else? - "Weekly Schedule," near the top of this blog's sidebar.

Here's the new weekly post schedule, for all three of my 'regular' blogs:

'Topic of the day,' by blog:

		A Catholic Citizen in America	Apathetic Lemming of the North	Sauk Centre Journal
Sunday		Being Catholic		Weekly post
Monday		Featured topic	Science and technology
Tuesday
Wednesday		Studying the Bible and Catechism	Architecture and design
Thursday
Friday		My take on the news	Whatever
Saturday

Here's my reason for this change in habits:

Scheduled Creativity?!

Over the years I've had quite a few jobs, from beet chopper and delivery guy to advertising copywriter and graphic designer. Then there were those stints as a radio disk jockey. And a high school teacher. Not at the same time, of course.

I've learned quite a few things, including the value of time management. Which is why there are changes coming in this and some other blogs.

I'd like to divide my time like this:

1. 100%
   Creative projects
   • Some of which have been on the back burner for
     • years
     • Decades
2. 100%
   Researching and writing posts for
   • This blog
   • My other blogs,
     [Get ready for shameless self-promotion ]
     including
     • Apathetic Lemming of the North
       Micro-reviews, plus the occasional rant, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: Technical difficulties, the nature of the universe, and whim permitting
     • Sauk Centre Journal Blog
       Small town life, the way it is in this central Minnesota town
     • Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space
       Notes and ruminations of a writer, recapturing traces of a decades-old dream
     • Narcissus-X
       A blog entirely devoted to the Narcissus-X blog and Narcissis-X, the blogger who blogs on Narcissus-X, about Narcissus-X
3. 100%
   Tales of
   • Loonfoot Falls
     • Small town life, the way it never was
   • Galaxy Cadet
     • Heroics and hairspray in the 27th century
   • Castle Dampthorn
     • I don't even have a tagline for this one

Obviously, that won't work, since about two thirds of the way into "100% Creative projects," I'd start eating into the time I need for sleep.

If I discipline myself to spend no more time on each post in the new schedule than I do now, I should have about three days a week available for 'catching up. That's a big if, though: I've tried this sort of thing before.

My plan is to write one more post for this blog today, and another for the Sauk Centre Journal. We'll see how this goes.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming Hits the Big Six-Oh"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 1, 2011)
• "Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show: Second Morning on the Floor"
  (August 4, 2011)
• "Information Technology, Blogging, and Practicing Patience"
  (May 13, 2011)
• "Blogging, the Vatican, and Getting a Grip"
  (April 9, 2011)
• "Why I Write Posts on A Catholic Citizen in America"
  (March 6, 2011)