The Rules We Make for Ourselves
This post is a little later than usual.
Honestly...
The first four hours of today weren't spent writing.
They were spent catching up.
Sometimes a week gets away from you before you even realize it's happening.
This was one of those weeks.
Monday and Tuesday were filled with training.
Four hours each day.
The training was good.
Really good.
The kind of training that should make life easier for my teams in the long run.
The problem wasn't the training.
The problem was that everything else still expected an eight-hour day.
Meetings.
Emails.
Teams messages.
Presentations.
Data.
Customers.
Questions.
Deadlines.
Eight hours of expectations...
Compressed into less than four.
I've always been able to squeeze a little more out of a day than most people expect.
I don't say that as a badge of honor.
It's just how my mind works.
Context switching has never bothered me.
A meeting ends.
A report gets reviewed.
A chapter gets read.
A discussion post gets outlined.
Another meeting starts.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, life keeps moving.
Most weeks...
It works.
A while back I made a rule for myself.
If my schoolwork isn't reasonably caught up by Tuesday evening...
I don't stream.
Not because anyone told me to.
Because I know myself.
Streaming is something I love.
Which makes it the perfect reward.
Not the thing that comes before the work.
What counts as "reasonable" has changed over time.
For a long time, discussion replies were the one thing that could wait until Thursday. Most of my classmates don't post until Wednesday anyway, so it actually gave me more people to engage with.
Everything else?
Papers.
Presentations.
Research.
Reading.
Done by Tuesday night.
Kids in bed.
Push the button.
Go have fun.
This term added something new.
A podcast.
Honestly...
I'm loving it.
The final project asks us to take a sociological look at a movie through a podcast instead of a traditional paper.
Writing the script is fun.
Recording it is even better.
The problem is...
One take is never enough.
I always think I can do one more.
One better.
Then comes editing.
Listening.
Changing something.
Recording again.
It's become my Thursday project.
And I wouldn't change it.
But then this week's training arrived.
By yesterday morning, my day started at six.
Not because I wanted it to.
Because work from the day before was already waiting.
My normal workday ends at four.
Yesterday...
I missed dinner.
I finally shut everything down just before seven.
None of that was school.
We still took the kids out.
A little treat.
A trip to the hardware store.
A new weed eater came home with us while I continue pretending the old one still has a future.
That's probably a story for another day.
The kids got tucked into bed.
Then school took over.
By the time everything was finished...
It was long past the time I normally push the button and go live.
I'll admit...
It's frustrating.
I miss streaming.
I miss the conversations.
The laughs.
The community.
After a long day, it's one of the places where I refill my tank.
But that's exactly why the rule exists.
Sometimes having your priorities in the right order doesn't feel good.
Sometimes it means saying no to something you genuinely want to do.
Not because it's wrong.
Because something else comes first.
That's rarely fun.
But I still think it's right.
I've realized over the years that discipline isn't measured by doing the things you have to do. Most of us can manage that. Real discipline shows up when you willingly give up something you were looking forward to because you've already decided what matters more.
I don't like missing stream nights. I don't think I ever will. But every time I keep that promise to myself, I'm quietly reinforcing something far more important than a schedule. I'm proving that my priorities aren't just words I say out loud. They're decisions I make when nobody else is watching.
Hopefully next Tuesday, the button gets pushed.
If not...
The work comes first.
Much love.
Stay safe.
Wash your damn hands.
And I will see you, next time.
