People ask me fairly regularly how I find time for everything I do. Which is fair. An ex once said “I’d tell you to find a hobby, but I think you already have two hundred and fifty of them.” I’ve had people stare at me like I was insane when I tell them even the short list of what I have on my plate at any given time. One of my medical team has accused me of being “incredibly driven” on multiple occasions – when I wound up in the hostibule because of an infection and on disability to recover from it she outright told me to treat it as a vacation. So yeah…
A lot of this comes down to a few basic principles I live by. I’ll talk about them in another post.
Anyway, here’s a typical day when I’m not trying to grow back a chunk of meat on my foot.
3:45AM: get up, check the news, shower, do morning drugs, etc.
5:15AM: leave the house, hit the gas station for breakfast, a fresh cup of drinking fluid, etc.
5:50AM: get to work, throw my breakfast in the drawer at my workbench, plug in my phone, arrange everything for the day. I have a very specific layout for my workbench to optimize productivity. Notebook and phone behind me as I work so they aren’t in the way of my actual work, but within reach if I need to write something down or something weird happens with one of my classes. Drinking fluid and anarchy drinks next to the notebook – not where I’ll knock it over, but within easy reach if I get thirsty.
6:00AM: start working. At some point soon after I get disgusted with some of my coworkers’ endless stupidity and bigotry and throw on the headphones to listen to my classes. Unless there’s a good reason to shut it off (certain tasks require real concentration and I like doing high-quality work), the classes are playing pretty much the entire time I’m at work and not on break.
10:00-10:15AM: morning break. Shut off the headphones for a few minutes, pound down some nuts, do some reading, maybe check up on the news.
12:00-12:30PM: lunch. Eat lunch while reading, working on projects, or whatever.
2:00-2:15PM: afternoon break. As with morning break.
2:30PM: either leave because I’m not working OT that day or be thrilled that certain annoying coworkers are going home right at the eight hour mark.
Sometime between 2:30 and 5:00PM: go home. The specific time depends on how much OT I’m working that week and whether or not I need to tweak my schedule for something going on after work. My bosses are pretty cool about shuffling it around as long as you get in the suggested amount, which ranges from 5-10 hours per week.
Fifteen minutes to an hour later: get home. Go to Devil Monkey Laboratories. Go directly to Devil Monkey Laboratories. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Work until time for Night Foodz. Get back to it after Night Foodz and work until 8:00-10:00PM. While I’m working in Devil Monkey Laboratories, I typically have either classes or a movie going on the second monitor to listen to. That is all the time I waste in a day on anything resembling watching TV.
Sometime between 8:00 and 10:00PM: do night drugs and go to bed. Sleep several hours.
On a related note, here’s my typical daytime diet:
Breakfast (eaten a bite or three at a time from 6AM to 10AM): gas station croissant sandwich, usually ham or sausage, and milk.
Morning snack: nuts; I keep a big square plastic jar of cashews and honey-roasted peanuts on my workbench. It typically lasts a month between refills. So I’m eating maybe an ounce or an ounce and a half a day.
Lunch: either a frozen entrée or something I made on Sunday and packaged ahead of time.
Afternoon snack: more nuts.
Concurrently with all of this I have a 44oz gas station cup of diet pop. Usually Diet Dew, Diet Dr. Pepper, or Diet Cherry Coke/Pepsi. Sometimes a cup or two of tea with Splenda or Stevia.
I’m not sure what the calorie count is here, but the carbs are well within my limits for controlling my blood sugar. I also dropped 25 pounds between April and July. “So much for the Corona seventeen.”