A Waste Of Wednesday

Wednesday January 20th, 2010 - Chicago, IL

It’s coming up on three weeks into the new year and my whole schedule has completely jumped the tracks and run off course. I’m swinging in the breeze like a rusty gate and I’ve got to stop now and regroup immediately before I lose control of everything. I’m drifting.

It’s not like I haven’t done this before, but this is not what I planned for and I absolutely refuse to accept it. If I’m going to get anything done of any significance, I have to make a conscious effort to block my time and use it efficiently. I started the year off OK but then went off into my old ways and now I’m just letting the wind take me where it wants to go.

Today was a complete waste of time. Not good. I ended up sleeping late and that starts a day off in the wrong direction. I’ve been pretty good about popping out of bed early lately but today I flat out blew it. I don’t know why, and then when I woke up I still felt sleepy.

Emails have built back up to over 600, my bathroom is filthy, everything I own is piled up in disarray and I wouldn’t know where to find anything important if I really needed to track it down on short notice. In other words, I’m right back to ground zero all over again.

The fact is, things just take more time than planned on and that puts everything else off schedule and before you know it nothing gets done. Yesterday was a good example. I had a day I could have used to work on my mess, but I chose to go up to Milwaukee for lunch with Richard Halasz and then a trip to see the venue we’ll be doing a show on March 13th.

Did I have to do that? No, but I wanted to. But it wasn’t absolutely necessary. I need the discernment to determine what’s really important and what isn’t and then the discipline to execute and enforce it after I’ve made my decision. That’s a whole lot harder to get done than it is to say, but I’ve got to make an effort or I’m going to be out of time all the time.

Today I was asked to appear on some radio show in Chicago I’d never heard of to pump up our play “You’re On The Air”. In theory, that was great. In reality, it was a completely wasted trip to Chicago and several hours of time I’ll never get back. I’m sorry I took time out of my schedule to do it, and it didn’t do any good for anyone. It was a mistake to go.

The only good thing was meeting the lady who hosted the show. Her name is Maureen O’Looney, and I’m not nearly clever enough to make that up. She’s almost 90 from what the engineer guy told me, and she speaks like she’s auditioning for a Lucky Charms spot.

She was an absolute sweetheart of a person, but as far as promoting our show it was one of the biggest wasted trips I’ve ever made. This was on a brokered AM station and I don’t think there were many listeners who would want to see our show. I tried to fake patience.

I can’t keep doing distracting things like this. It takes hours out of my day that I should and could be doing some productive things. No offense to Maureen, but I’ve got a lot of things brewing and need to keep stirring the kettle. I’m angry at myself. This was a waste.