Last Day

July 31st 2005 at 8:14 pm

Today is the last day of my 2 month summer break, sadly, and I go back to work and so forth. Back to writing on lunch breaks and other found time.

I was reading Arnold Schwartznegger’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding the other day to refresh my memory about some items, when I re-read the section where he talks about being dedicated. Everyone complains that they don’t have enough ‘time’ to get things done, and that he did a lot of his early bodybuilding at 5am while in training in the army. I then saw a weblog entry by a professional writer that they had once thought they were a better late night writer, but then tried switching to early morning to try it out, and found they were a better early morning writer.

Now, I’m always telling new writers to log their writing at different times of day and see how well they do, and it’s been many years since I’ve tried doing early morning. It obviously didn’t work when I was working a late night shift, so it isn’t surprising that my traditionally productive hours were later in the day/night. But if I want to be a responsible person and keep my day job as I continue to keep at the writing thing, I decided I’d try a little experiment for August, after talking it over with Emily.

For the first time I’ll be attempting (emphasis on attempt) to get up at 5am, go to the gym, give a hard workout, come back and shower, then write until just before 8 when I walk to work (should give me an hour or two of writing). I’ll be going to bed somewhere between 9-10pm.

I used to do something like this, but woke up at 10:30am when I was late shifting it, worked out, then wrote before driving to work. But getting the day started by working out really changed my energy levels and productivity. I’m hoping that since my entire schedule has been shifted down by about 5 or 6 hours through my agreeing to work 8-5 instead of 1-12 that this will actually work.

We shall see. I tend towards insomnia, but when I work out hard every day, I tend not to have it as bad, so I’m hoping this will settle into a pattern after a few weeks. I intend to report on words, weights, and success just to keep myself honest.

Ciao.

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