Last night, in an attempt to put my adult pants on, I made a valiant effort at going to bed before 1 am on a school night. I’ve been taking an eye-opening copywriting class and one nugget of brilliant information that stuck with me was how to prioritize myself and my creative work. Not work in the 9-6 sense, but the work that helps motivate your creativity. The work that inspires you. The work that lights a fire under your ass and invokes sashaying to Beyoncé down the hall to the bathroom for your morning piss.
That kind of work.
IÂ just don’t have the energy for that sort of sashaying when I get home from work.
Let me offer some perspective — I’m typically gone 11-13 hours a day depending on my workload. Often, the last thing I want to do when I get home is work on anything else other than a bag of potato chips on the couch. Don’t forget those annoying life things to take care of too, like bills, cleaning and changing my underwear. It’s recently meant that taking care of things that fulfill me outside of work get shoved to the side because I’m just. trying. to. relax. when I get home.
So, with this newfound information that (duh) I need to prioritize myself and my creative work, I took a page from this copywriting seminar’s book (Get it? Writing jokes are hysterical!) and decided to get up earlier than usual to take care of my needs first thing in the morning.
Like-5-fucking-am-first-thing.
That gives me a good 3-ish hours to get my creative writing juices flowing before I need to hit the road and flip the bird at Florida drivers. This morning I had a gecko pop its little head out from under my hood while I was going 65 mph. Little guy held on until I got to work.
Sorry, little guy. Welcome to your new concrete home of my parking structure in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I know I took you away from your family and lush paradise. But, hey, you lived?
Moving on.
The alarm went off this morning at 5:03 a.m. (because somehow that made me less likely to throat punch someone than 5:00 a.m.). I hit sleep. 5:11. Sleep. 5:20. Sleep.
By the time I got up, I felt like crap because I hadn’t fulfilled a new goal. So I beat myself up about for it a few minutes while I laid in bed, because that’s normal and healthy. I was productive for a bit, answering emails and looking up recipes on Pinterest.
HEY! Judgment-free zone.
So after I pinned another recipe to my board that easily has enough food to feed several Duggar families, I thought I’d try to make myself feel better by dressing the part.
You look good, you feel good, right?! <cue giant eye roll>
So I threw on a dress and curled my damn hair.
(It fell out before lunchtime.)
(I still feel like crap.)
But someone at work told me I must be going out on an interview or something because I don’t normally look this nice…
So I’ve got that going for me.