Daily Family Planner

I tend to have a one-track mind. Once I start something, that's it; everything else kinda gets put on the back burner until that thing is done. I've always known this about myself, but every now and then the reality of my blinders hits me. The most recent focus of my time and energy has been my blog. I get up in the morning looking forward to getting the kids off to school, grabbing my cup of coffee, and blogging. It's like crack; I post, people comment, I check a few times a day to see that I have a new follower or two- more people to make laugh and share my craziness with- wooo hooo!! Now I need to have an epic post, draw more people into my chaotic world, get their feedback, so I research for future blog posts. What can I say tomorrow that will knock their socks off? Maybe make coffee shoot out of their nose in laughter. (I'm not aiming for that to happen to any of my Inklingers, but if it does one day, please share. I might pee my pants in excitement that I made coffee shoot out of someone's nose, and I'll be sure to let you know I peed my pants to share in the embarrassment.)

Something had to be done. My addiction was taking over. I was still getting the housework done, the laundry, remembering to pick the kids up from school, but I was doing things like checking books out from the library, keeping them for 3 weeks with only having read 16 pages and renewing them for another 3 weeks, because my free time was spent on blogger. I fell behind on some of my TV shows, too, in keeping the laptop up and running after the kids went to bed. It's great to have a hobby and all, but having other outlets is good, too.

Our schedule

In the meantime, Z was sleeping until 1 or 2 every day, some days we'd eat dinner at 5, some days 7, the kids were cramming their homework into a time slot right before bed- it was pure chaos some days. So, I decided to create (and by 'create' I mean find something on the internet someone else has created and change it to suit us- I know Microsoft Excel, but not *that* well) a Daily Family Planner. I found an amazing one on Microsoft Office (click the 'Daily Family Planner' link to be able to download it yourself) that I was able to change to suit my family, complete with a section for me, Z, and the kids. Hubby was not inadvertently left out of this schedule; his work schedule is so unpredictable that we pretty much just carry on life here ourselves, and adjust when he's home.

So far things have been good. We implemented the new schedule about mid-week last week, and so far it's going well. It's tough getting Z up at 8, but it's happened. It's tough to only spend an hour and a half on my blog in the mornings, then having a few hours break until I can come back to it, but I've found it's possible to do.

 I posted our new family schedule on the fridge for everyone to see, and it's helped out. Now, when the kids come home from school, they know it's homework time. Not just mommy telling them it's homework time, it's written, in pen, on something that's on the fridge- holy crap, mom means business. And of course there is room for exceptions. Are we going to run errands each and every day for 2 hours? Nope. So, we'll bump the homework up and that gives you more free time or family time. It's a work in progress, but at least adds some structure to our lives.

As for me and this schedule helping my addiction? I'm now on page 69 of my book, and I haven't even had it a week yet. I kept the computer closed almost all day yesterday, only checked my blog twice. And, after hitting 'publish post' here in a few, I'm heading to take a shower, pick my son up, and get truly started with my day.

But don't worry, Inklingers. Just like with any other addiction, I will feed the urge secretly here and there in the non-designated blog times. Click the refresh button on my comments, see if I have new followers. If the other adults in the house pick up on me feeding my addiction, I'll fake a breakdown and go lock myself in the closet with my computer. Yes, my new schedule gives me plenty of time to keep up with my blog, with the blogs I read, to keep things fresh and interesting, but when the urge hits, it hits. I'm not strong-willed enough, when it comes to my blog, to not give into the urges and feed that addiction, yet.

I make blogging sound so dirty, don't I?