The Five Year Plan (BEDS 004)

You know what I suck at? Long-term planning. I am physically incapable, it seems, of planning everything beyond the end of tomorrow. Like, I just can't do it. I have many a talent, and that simply isn't included. I had a weekly planner mousepad, once. I thought it would help.

It didn't.

I tried so hard. I would sit down at the beginning of the week, carefully consider my work schedule and school schedule and literally everything that I had going on in my life. I would judge how long a task would take, and plan an asburd amount of extra time for it. In most cases, in fact, it was actually a rather reasonable schedule.

But something would come up, as something always does. I would miss one item on my to-do list for the day, and then suddenly the rest of my week would be invalid. Because guess what: each item on every to-do list for the rest of the week was dependent on me getting that one freaking thing done on Monday!

"So just bump it all back a day," you say. But guess what! I can't! It's all there, in ink, permenently visible to my vulnerable soul! I can't just change it. Do you know how long it took to discover this delicate balance of regular updates? Three years! Aka: TOO FREAKING LONG.

So you can see, from my inability to efficiently plan for the week, why I would dislike the idea of a 5 Year Plan. I don't think I've even broken into Year 1 yet--I'm still rooted in Year 0! I can barely plan for today, let alone five freaking years from now. (Plus, I'll be, like, twenty-seven. Twenty-seven! I don't want to think about that, thank you.)

How do you even make a five-year plan? That's the sort of thing they tell you to do in your first year of university, when your eyes are still full of hope and the combination of student debt and a retail job hasn't killed your soul yet. That's the sort of thing that they tell you to do in high school, when you still think adulthood is going to be the Best Thing Ever. (Spoiler alert: run away.) I'm pretty sure you have to have your life together to even think about making a Five Year Plan.

Me? I avoided my desk for three days because of a giant spider I watched crawl across it earlier in the week. I am the very opposite of put together.

I mean, don't get me wrong--I have goals. I have dreams. I'm a semi-functioning human being. I like to think that I'll get accepted into an international program in Walt Disney World, and spend all of next summer working there. I like to think that I'll have my university degree by the time I'm 24. (Okay...maybe 25.) I have ideas for more tattoos that I want to plaster my body with. I find myself considering moving back to the East coast after graudation.

And somewhere in between all that, I like to think I'll get published.

But in the last couple years I've learned a thing or do--namely, it's okay to take things one thing at a time. I work better when I narrow my focus, weedle my to-do list down to a single day. I can't let myself get caught up in everything I have to do tomorrow, next week, next month...just to complete a deadline that I've imposed on myself.

I don't have a Five Year Plan. But I make goals based on the seasons, I pick my passion and run with it, and somehow manage to get stuff done along the way. Maybe not as much as I hoped, but something is better than nothing.

There is no time limit. Just a list I made at one in the morning, and the hope that I'll complete it sometime in this lifetime.

Until later,

- Justyne

FREEDOM

Let me tell you, folks, I have taken summer for granted for FAR TOO LONG.

My blog posts have been, clearly, off track as of late. This happens a lot. I'm not proud. But every now and then, I have a valid excuse. Like four exams, one student film, two different website codes, one paper, and a weekend in which I proudly did nothing but scroll through Tumblr and play Wind Waker. (Followed by a couple weeks in which I didn't update because, really, what else is new?)

Now that exams have passed and the academic year has ended, I feel a foreign sense of freedom that I have not felt in years. It's strange, because I now find myself in the same life situation I held for two years--no classes, no homework, just a part time job and all my time to devote to writing. (Or playing Sims. Mostly playing Sims.) I have the exact same amount of freedom now as I had before I restarted my academic career back in September.

Now, though, it feels more...liberating. After months of cramming homework into every spare moment, of studying at work and writing notes on the bus, I now have NOTHING TO DO. I have all the time in the world to work on as many personal projects as I want--or to just sit on my butt and watch Netflix until my brains ooze out of my ears. (Which I've done. A lot.)

I find myself making plans, massive to-do litsts with more items than I probably have time for. And I did the same thing even before I went back to school--although my free time never actually increased, it still felt like it did during the summer. I don't think this feeling will go away after I graduate, either. This is something that has long been engraved into my brain, and will stick around for probably an enternity. There's just something about summer that has this almost magical feel to it.

I guess that's why it's my favourite season.

Until later,

- Justyne

A Bad Combination

I am very, very bad at concentrating. I'm not sure when I first realized this; if it was a sudden epiphany or a sort of slow realization over time. But it has become clear to me how frequent my pauses mid-action are; how often I drop my pen or let my fingers hover over the keyboard, allowing my eyes to switch to Facebook or Twitter or the mere air around my workspace, my mind thousands of miles away from the current task.

In the past, I've enjoyed calling myself a "Master of Multitasking", which in reality means that I enjoy having half a dozen Chrome tabs, a Word document, and a sketchbook open in front of me and pretending that I'm getting stuff done. I hated focusing my energy on only one task at a time, mostly because I thought that allowing my brain to jump from project to project at whiplash speed would be more productive than trying to focus on just one.

Pro tip: it's really not.

By nature, I am a very ambitious person. If  I get an idea for a new project, I don't want to wait the weeks or months to finish whatever it is I'm currently working on--I want to start it now. I have so many things that I want to do, and I want to do them all today--not tomorrow, next week, or next year...today. I hate the idea of having too much free time because, hello, that's free time that I could be using to DO things! When I dream, I don't half-ass it--I go all out.

When I first decided that I wanted to be a writer at age nine, I didn't just want to be published. I wanted to be best-selling, creator of a hundred books and a franchised series, complete with movie and TV show adaptations of my stories. I always figured I'd go to college, sure, but I always thought I'd go just for fun, because I'd already be set for life with a successful career. Duh.

Turns out, though, that an abundance of ambition alone is not enough to accomplish anything. When you pair it with my utter lack of ability to concentrate, along with a bountiful supply of laziness, lack of motivation and crippling fear of the unknown, and you get a very, very bad combination.

It's scary--and often discouraging--to think about how many of my projects I could be done already if I had learned how to properly apply myself. How many new projects could I be working on? HOW PRODUCTIVE COULD I REALLY BE? We'll never know. And it sucks being constantly aware that, in some ways, I've already disappointed my 9-year-old self.

I've tried so many times to dig myself out of this hole. I wake up early, work my way through my morning routine as a Super Motivated Person, convinced that today is the day that I change everything. I have become an expert at creating a Master Plan, so clearly fool-proof that it absolutely cannot fail.

But the problem with making a Master Plan, with making such a large and daunting to-do list, is that I get overwhelmed. I get so overwhelmed, in fact, that I throw it all to the side, leaving it up to Future Justyne to sort out while I distract myself with Sims or Netflix or literally anything else.

Past Justyne is a real bitch. Present Justyne doesn't want to turn out the same way.

It's hard, trying to focus on one thing. I've never liked the idea of taking baby steps--I'm far too impatient. The only way to break this trend, though, is to do just that; to narrow my focus, shorten my to-do list, force myself to focus on one thing at a time. It's hard, but it's necessary.

I fumble. I screw up. That much is still the same--but if I don't forgive myself and move on, then who will?


Until later,

- Justyne