So I had a week to myself and--I blew it

My wife and kids were out of town for a week in August. It was just me and the dog (the one that sort of bugs me most of the time, but more on that later). I had the place and my time all to myself (except for work).

To say that I had ambitious plans and expectations for that week would be an understatement. I'll just go ahead a list of few of the ideas that swirled around in my head as the fateful week approached.

1. Clean up the yard.

2. Meditate for an hour a day (or try to)

3. Write every day.

4. Draw every day.

5. Stuff with the car and the dog and exercise...I'm kind of over this list.

6. Go to bed early every night or almost every night.

7. Rest and relax.
8. No TV.

Pretty solid list, huh?

How could it ever fail?

I was even going to take two whole days off to help me accomplish my ambitious goals that would soon change the course of my entire life.

I'll pretty much skip to the summary.

I played more video games not chosen by the kids (not Minecraft) this week than I have in probably more than a year. At first, it was fine and it eventually culminated in my playing Fortnight with my brother (I'm going to do a whole/short post on this later). When he left the game I played three more games and turned it off, not happy with the result.

Remember that part of my list that talked about playing video games...?

No, because it wasn't in there.

So, basically, what ended up happening was that I was very focused on trying to get things done. Ok, not very focused because I would consistently watch TV or mess around on my phone. When my family is around I don't watch much TV and I almost never play video games by myself or with old friends over the interwebs.

I got a bunch of the things that we've been needing to do around the house, including getting the wheels re-aligned on our primary car and the pile of hay and rabbit poop from mucking out the rabbit pen, mostly taken to the dump.

I managed to draw a little and I meditated a little but I didn't really write anything except for a blog post, which is not a huge accomplishment since they don't take a lot of time or commitment.

So what did I learn from all of this?

Well, I obviously set my standards way too high and I should have tried to widdle my list of goals down to a few items.

I also think that I blame too much of my inability to improve myself or get things done on my family and daily responsibilities because when I was given the chance to finally have time to myself to rest and get things done, I pretty much did the minimum amount that I could and get away with it. And, frankly, if I didn't live with other people, I wonder if I would have even done that.

Ah well. We'll get up tomorrow and try again, right?

If you've actually read this whole thing, thanks.

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