Just kidding! Well...it's complicated.
One of my biggest challenges in life has been taming the wild animal that is my consciousness to the degree that it can stop making problems for itself. It’s essentially a balance between freedom and structure. I want to do so many things but I never want to do what it takes to make them happen. And so I’ve been playing this game of balance and getting better and better at it.
I’ve always been looking for a way to get my Yang-Qi in balance and be able to hone in on something and attack it with everything I’ve got, or a way to make peace with Saturn, who demands discipline and order. Saturn’s always has it out for me, who has always avoided structure.
I started off feelings wedged inside a school schedule and then a work schedule and I felt forced to do everything. I had no motivation other than fear. I had lots of things I wanted to do but no idea how to motivate myself to do any of them because all of them seemed so hard (see “depression due to not being taught the tools to interact in society”).
Then one day I got it in my head that I wanted to see the world and started studying Japanese and it sparked something. I became obsessed with learning. I wanted to learn 10 languages and I pushed hard to learn my first. It was great.
But there was an element of passive laziness to it. I never put much effort into the study itself. I was still far more motivated by fear. After some time, the obsession to keep studying remained but the passion was gone but luckily I had learn both conversational Japanese and Chinese first. I decided to put everything aside and learn to just chill and be in the moment, quit my job and threw away all structure from my life so I could truly be free!
And then I just enjoyed being free without being tied down by any hopes for the future. It was liberating but I do believe we come here to build and create and interact and express desire, and so I realize I had swung too far in that direction.
When I came back to Japan and started working seriously again about a year and half ago, I decided to start this grind where every day I’d devote 4 hours to work that aligned with my desires (freelance and building up my freelance work). I figured the rest of my time I’d feel motivated to work on a the many projects I have.
I have felt motivated but I have a whole lot of projects and so I also tend to get overwhelmed. I realized I should do the same with my creative work that I do with my work-work and make a system for it.
I worried about making a system before because my creativity comes from my freedom. But I don’t feel tied down by the idea of having 4 hours of “creative time” or “study time” every day, so long as I’m allowed to choose how I spend it. I can be creative on demand, I just can’t choose how it comes out. Sometimes it wants to come out as words, sometimes as sounds, sometimes as community projects and sometimes as a desire to grow and expand as a human.
It’s important that I can build a life where excitement is a bigger motivator than regret or fear, but I also want to get stuff done. I look at Elon Musk or Joe Rogan or even my new friend 
4 hours a day of creativity or study, in addition to my 4 hours of building my business/means of supporting myself with work I love.
That’s an 8 hour work day.
-I will set no start time and can take as many breaks as I want, other than classes with students, meetings or some task that needs to be done at a specific time
I will set a countdown clock every day, turn it on when I’m working and off when I’m not.
I will subtract the amount of hours I have class from the timer, so if I have 5 classes, the timer will be set to 3 hours.
I’ll tap into my desire to accomplish tasks and make a checklist every week and adjust it as the week goes by. I put 20 things on my list today and already accomplished 5 of them.
I can stop the timer at any time for stretching or taking a nap.
during my “work hours” these list items will be considered FULL WORK: contacting students, accounting, trial lessons searching for new students, language study, music practice, music recording, novel writing or editing, organizing or preparing events, advertising or promotion for teaching or events
Any Hive related items will have a limit of 1 hour per day considered work time, and that will ONLY be for writing and responding to comments and working on Cross Culture projects. Hive tasks may only be worked on while riding the train!
Tasks will take certain priority levels. Student related is first priority for a minimum of 4 hours a day (including class). I will choose between my novel and Music for second priority. I can only do a low priority task after I’ve accomplished a high priority task.
Reading Hive posts, YouTube videos (even educational), anything crypto related, messages to friends will NOT count as work. Occasional Exceptions will be made.
I can take a break from this work style whenever I want but only if I think it will truly make me happier or healthier, not out of avoidance or old inclinations towards laziness.
-I’ll allow myself to do 20 minutes of housework and 20 minutes of exercise and 20 minutes relying to personal messages on discord or social media on the clock.
I’ll try to start within an hour of waking up and I’ll turn the clock off while eating.
I’ll allow 5-10 minute breaks for meditation and stretching between ask task.
I can extend my work day any time I feel inspired to but first I need to take a break and meditate on it to decide if I have enough energy for it.
-I’ll try to do this 6-7 days a week, but only if it feels right. I’ll take breaks whenever my body or minds asks me to or when there is something fun that I want to do. Student/business related work will be 5-6 days a week.
All time not considered work time will be as stress free as possible and as enjoyable as possible.
Also, 10 minutes of Abraham Hicks a day after work hours, I just feel so much more balanced and in tune with the world when I have some Abraham in my life.
Today I had 4 hours of class so I spent an hour and a half promoting my class, sent a few emails to students and did some accounting. That left me with two extra hours to exercise and clean and prepare my mind for some more serious creative work in the coming weeks and then to write this post and afterwards I’ll catch up on replies and study some Japanese!
I hope Saturn is satisfied. I feel really good about this plan.
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I’ll be joining the 432hz open mic in Natural Medicine in an hour or two! Hope you come join us to play or listen.
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