Actually a couple of ideas, so bare with me while I detail them.
A). Melatonin is helping me wake up on time. I’m guessing my body really wants to go diurnal, and has no desire to get up if it’s not daylight yet. I’ve woken up better on the two days I took melatonin than on the days I haven’t. I’m also going to get a multi-vitamin that has a healthy dose of vitamin D, since I have to waste all my daylight hours out of the sun.
B). Cooking two breakfast meals and 4 entrée meals is the right balance to get me through the week. Point being I must get everything cooked on Sunday. I lucked into this realization after way too much over-thinking it. Winn-Dixie had a meat special on some cuts of beef, chicken, and pork, and I stockpiled. So then I got some fresh veggies on sale—salad mixes and squash and Brussels sprouts—and decided to cook four different meats since I already had salmon in the freezer. I pulled out South Beach Diet recipes I wanted to try, and then managed to get six days of different lunches and supper out of them. And most recipes made enough servings I could freeze one for later.
The one drawback I found was I didn’t quite have enough Tupperware to single meal portion out everything. Next week, I’ll make sure I have my lunches and breakfasts for work portioned out first because the supper and home lunches will be okay in a larger container. I will also have to ration off some dessert too, since I already ate all the Jello sugar-free pudding.
C). Alternating reading hours for the writing hour. This one really hurts my heart. But the truth is I’m starting to ignore what else I must get done in favor of my semi-created world. I can squeeze in the writing at the paying job; I don’t squeeze in the research reading nearly as well.
D). Paying myself for reading. Yeah, I’m going to bribe myself. Fifteen minutes earns $0.25. As of Nov. 24th, I’ve only earned $11.75. I’d love to get enough on the reading to pay for an external harddrive. (I learned the shelf life of burned CDs and DVDs isn’t as long as I thought and now I’m petrified I’ll lose all my story data. An external harddrive is the first step in dealing with that fear. I need $55, so I have $43.25 to go. *Crossing fingers that it’s doable by third paycheck this month*
If this experiment is successful, I may start bribing myself for purchases I want to make with other chores I hate. After all, I want a DVD burner for the computer and then the set up so I can transfer my VHS tapes to DVDs. I want a dishwasher. I want a Victorian faucet that must be one of the most expensive faucets in the world for my bathtub.
That’s it on life changing ideas. This weekend will probably have me tied to the chair doing all the reading I have been avoiding. I have a few big rocks I still need to accomplish this week, and sadly, it took until Friday before I felt I could do anything.
