This month marks ten years since the publication of my book. It has officially been a lost decade in my life in what should have been its prime.
This is a more depressing blog-day than most over the course of the last decade. Last year I lamented that I had gone into the year with grand plans for becoming more productive but that they didn’t pan out and I didn’t get much accomplished. This year I resolved to put my focus and energy on a single project that might make the last decade worth it. I just needed to get out of football season… get past March Madness… get past the release of the NFL schedule… work on this one post about politics… and before I knew it it was football season and I hadn’t written one word of it. Meanwhile, this is the 26th post since the last blog-day post, breaking last year’s record for the lowest total since 2021.
I had said in last year’s blog-day post that I’d been disabused of the notion that I’d be able to climb out of my funk without some sort of professional help, but there were periods within the year when I genuinely thought I could work on this project on my own. The Flex Schedule Watch itself has led me to string together decent stretches of productivity that should be able to carry over to the rest of the year. There were periods when I was all jazzed up and ready to start working on the project as soon as it became a new month, but I never actually got started once the month turned over. I think part of the problem I’ve had over the course of the last decade is that I put too much importance on the start of a big project, having a sense in the back of my mind that once I start working on it, it’ll be the end of my fun and I’ll have to spend every day working on it, and even though not all my time will be spent on it – I don’t think I’ve had more than four productive hours in a day this year – it’s still something that a part of my brain resists fiercely, allowing me to think that I could be working on it but never allowing me to take the leap to actually working on it. That’s the part I might need therapy to overcome – or just start working on it one day so I don’t have any more excuses.
I’d like to think that, as much as Year Nineteen for Da Blog marked a false start – one of many – in my attempt to pull myself out of my funk, approaching and hitting the big 2-0 will be the kickstart I need to actually start being more productive, to stop feeling like the proverbial basement dweller who spends all his time goofing off and wasting his life. But only time will tell if Year Twenty turns out to be the turning point I want, and need, it to be.