August 18th, my college courses start as I work to earn my bachelor’s in Creative Writing. However, it’s caused a bit of stress as I had no idea how I was going to balance college with being a creator, freelancer, and author. After all, I have a lot of things on my plate.
What it boils down to is prioritizing and stress reduction. While that might sound easy for some, it’s actually an incredibly difficult thing for me to accomplish.
What Does the Tentative Schedule Look Like?
Before college, I had blocks of time set up for writing books, blog posts, creating videos, and working on client projects. Unfortunately, I never have the time available to do everything I want. There are just too many things going on in my personal and professional life.
However, a lot of that will have to change if I want to pay my mortgage, go to college, and keep the content alive for the blog and YouTube channel. And a big part of that is how I view my time and wasting as little as possible.
Prioritizing the Day
The first step was to decide the most important aspects of each day. Obviously, keeping the mortgage payment current is of utmost importance. It’s kind of difficult to do everything else without a roof over my head.
The second most important aspect is college. This is the whole reason I have to reorganize my day, and it has great potential to improve a lot of things in my life in the future. I kind of have my heart set on getting a PhD at some point, which means education today is vastly important.
Then again, I view all education as important, even if it’s just spending time researching things on Google. Always be in a state of learning.
After clients and college are taken care of for the day, I can focus on content. This includes writing my books, publishing blog posts, or creating videos. Of course, the Monday night live streams will remain no matter what. They are outside of my normal workload, and I have a lot of fun interviewing authors.
Because I am setting aside a two-hour block every day for school work, I won’t be able to maintain a consistent schedule for content. At least, not until I can create a good routine for managing everything throughout the week.
Saturday Workload?
Saturdays might be the only day that I get a lot of quality time with WriterSanctuary. Of course, that also depends on how each week unfolds. If I don’t need all of the blocks of time I set aside for school work, I plan on filling them with planned projects that were scheduled for Saturday.
How it works is that I’ve created a two-hour block of time every Monday through Friday specifically for college classes. That’s not including the blocks of time on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I’m actually on campus. Then, I have five two-hour blocks worth of various projects, such as videos and blog posts, set aside on Saturday.
If I get all of my school work done by Wednesday, then two of the projects from Saturday will move over to Thursday and Friday.
But what if I need more time to do school work beyond the two-hour blocks every day? Well, then the school time will eat up the projects for that day, and those projects will get postponed.
Remember, college work is the second priority of the day. It takes precedence over everything else except client work. With how much money I’ll be spending for my bachelor’s degree, I need to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth.
Taking Sundays Off
I plan on taking Sundays off completely, aside from getting back to streaming games at 7:00 pm. It’s nice having the weekend apart from writing, videos, and client work, and we all need a break from the rigors of the week.
One of the biggest reasons why I want to get back into streaming live games on Sunday nights for ColoradoPlays is that it’s both relaxing and fun with the kids. I don’t really view it as work, as we’re technically just playing games and chatting with folks.
I’m actually making a promise to myself that I will not work on Sundays outside of streaming the games. Years of not having any real time off are starting to take their toll.
Besides, breaks are vital for mental health. They give you a chance to recharge, improve your mood, and become more resilient when stressed out in the future.
Ideally, I would use some of the projects from Saturday throughout the week as long as I can get my school work done in a timely manner.
Not Stressing By a Lack of Content
Perhaps the most difficult part of moving forward is knowing that I most likely won’t be able to maintain a routine publishing schedule. In the past, I would stress about not getting blog posts or videos up when I would like. I need to release that mindset and realize it’s for the greater good.
I’m not saying that there’s no way I can get three blog posts and three videos published each week. Because if I actually sit at my desk and work on all those projects, I should still be able to get a lot done. However, I need to stop stressing so much if and when it doesn’t happen.
In reality, the only thing I should be overly concerned with is time utilization. Sometimes, things will take longer to produce and publish. As long as I am putting in adequate time, that’s all that should really matter in the end.
So, I’m going to put in a bit of effort to change how I view my progression going forward. It’s not about how many words I can write in a day or what gets published at a certain time. It’s more about not wasting what time I have and doing my best to keep the tops spinning.
I’ve been trying to work on time management all year, and I still have a long way to go. But I really need to stop stressing myself out by not meeting self-imposed deadlines that are physically unrealistic.
I simply have too many things that I’d like to accomplish. I need to start reeling back on some of them.
WriterSanctuary Isn’t Going Anywhere
The bottom line is that WriterSanctuary is my flagship blog. It’s going to be around for many, many years as I continue to build and grow. It may not be the most consistent blog on the Internet, but at least it’s still moving in the right direction.
Besides, I plan on turning a lot of the college courses into some kind of content for both the blog and YouTube channel. Even if I’m just publishing one piece of content per week, it’s going to be interesting, to say the least.
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