Worked a Plan

Yesterday, before making made my late afternoon post, I made a writing to-do list. This included a couple of e-mails not strictly writing related, a couple of over-due replies to old friends. I did those, then tackled the list. As I completed each one, I recorded them in my writing diary with the time. Actually, making a post to this blog was one of the early items on the list, working on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People one of the last. By the end of the evening, all but one item on my to do list was done, and FTSP was more than 2,000 words further along. My dreams last night were of a completed novel.

I'm not a big fan of to do lists. Oh, I write them, not so much to guide me in what I have to do but to help me to realize all that I must do, to help not slack off before I have enough done. That was the purpose of yesterday's to do list--although I did tackle it in the approximate order I wrote it down.

Today I faced a different problem of work, another time of shifting gears. Returning to work after a weekend for me is always difficult. Not that I don't like returning to work; rather, that the weekend away from work causes me to be inefficient when I return, doubly so after a holiday weekend. I have one main project I need to complete ASAP, a flood study that refuses to cooperate with me. Consequently I'm looking for any excuse not to work on it. But, knowing I should work on it, I bring it to the table and try, but find myself allowing distractions to enter in. I'll waste time on the Internet, even writing stuff or Christian studies stuff, I'll read technical magazines I don't have to read, I'll organize over and over, etc--anything to not work on the difficult task.

I knew I should work on it today, but also knew I would be terribly inefficient if I did. I needed something to work on that would allow me to work efficiently and stick to my work during the time my employer pays me. As I made the 24 minute commute this morning, the perfect task came to mind: write a construction specification section from scratch. This is part of my self-start stuff I always have trouble starting, to keep up with standards. Yet, I love writing specs. It's about the most favorite part of my job. I'd rather be writing a spec for a specific project, but there's a certain satisfaction from taking a blank sheet and creating ex nihilo something the company really needs. So, after my devotionals, my reading in Wesley's letters, and checking a few web sites (all of which happen before I'm "on the clock"), I began writing a guide specification for underground storm water detention systems, something we've been needing for a long time. In two hours I had the basic structure done, and about 80 percent of the writing for one of the eleven manufacturers that will be included in the specification.

Other scheduled activities got in the way, along with people needing assistance--always a welcome diversion, but I had a concrete task to come back to during the day as thirty minutes free came up. By 5:15 PM I had the one manufacturer fully specified and proof-read. Since much of what I wrote for that one manufacturer will work for the others, I'm really pretty far along for about a half day's work. And I didn't waste my employer's time today, praise the Lord.

Of course, my brain is fried tonight. After reading twenty-some pages in Dune, and after an evening walk of about a mile, my brain is as tired as it's been in a long time, and I've barely been able to complete this post. I feel a good sleep coming on. Will my dreams be of completed novels, Bible studies in the planning stage, or underground storm water detention structures?