Turning Down Time Into "Do" Time At Home

First off, I'm sorry I haven't been in here lately. I don't know if it's that I haven't had much to say here or what.

Second, I have a confession to make. You've heard the saying, "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop" or something along those lines, right? Basically it means that if you don't have something to do, you'll cause trouble or something. In my case, if I'm not engaged in something and I'm bored, I'll do something dumb, like pace around my room or (if no one is home) the house. I don't know where I get that habit from. All I know is that it's a wasteful habit and not to mention annoying to those around me if I get caught. This is not a habit I want to pass down to my future children. It's also a behavior that would not fly at any job,including my volunteer work at a local thrift store; then again, there's almost always something for me to take care of there, even if it's simply wiping something down or reorganizing a display to make it more presentable. (And I can't speak for everybody, but in my case, if there's nothing to do whatsoever, and I'm not the one running the register, I could always just leave.)

 Anyway, I've made a post-New Year's resolution to have something planned for when I'm going to be home to help lessen the temptation for aimless roaming. For instance, last night, I determined that, when I got home from church, I would spend this afternoon reading a book of which I had gotten through the prologue so far. I would spend however much time I needed to get the book finished (barring any calls I needed to take or any requests to help with something of course). That ended up knocking roughly four to five hours out of my day, I believe. Even if my mind started to wander (and my body did once or twice), I made sure to get right back to the reading.

Tomorrow night, I think I'll plan on reading two books still on my reading list  (The Little Book of Stress and The Little Book of Crap).  After that, I'll grab one of my sudoku books (which has white rings) and finish the puzzles in that. If I finish that book before the evening's up, I'll grab the other book and finish the puzzles in that. If I finish that book, I'll do more of the puzzles in one of the calendar sets. (I have a black one and a red one. They're the "tear the page off" type of calendars.) If I have time after that, I'll take surveys that have been emailed to me and clean out my inbox.

I don't expect myself to get all of these done tomorrow night per se. However, maybe if I know I have an agenda for the evening, I won't feel so bored, and I won't be as tempted to move about needlessly. I think I'll try to do this every night and on the weekends (unless of course I do end up with a night or a weekend day where I need to be somewhere). I'll let you know how that turns out.