The Hectic-Dad editorial calendar says that I should be writing something to follow my new theme of Motivational Monday. The idea sounded great when I put it on the calendar. I’m not exactly sure why I planned on starting a recurrent theme in the middle of the month…but who am I to question my younger self, eh?

Well, it might have been a freaking amazing idea at the time, but today I’m probably at my most cynical. I kept meaning to sit down and write this post, but it wasn’t happening. I went for a walk with Hectic 12 and Hectic Grandson. I let them play at the park for almost an hour as I meandered the cement path around the park. I got in some exercise while the kids played.

The idea was to clear my head. Give myself some intellectual space to hit on The Greatest Motivational Post ever.

When we got back to the the house, I sat down and watched Youtube videos for almost an hour. Another grand idea, give my subconscious some time to work on the problem while my conscious mind watched music videos and the Minions. A step back from the prior rigors of the day, I told myself. Great idea, sucky execution.

After that we threw together a dinner of all the leftovers we could find. This meant cleaning out two refrigerators. Unfortunately, due to some bad prior planning, the meal preparation involved opening a lot of containers and negotiating whether the food therein was still edible. This definitely distracted me from any form of motivational conscious thought. I kept thinking “if somebody gets food-poisoning, I’m going to be really pissed”. It never really crossed my mind that the recipient of the food poisoning would be even more pissed. It was all about me at that juncture.

After dinner, I tried again to come up with something motivational…and failed. I folded laundry for an hour. As you may already know, Laundry is Life, so this seemed like an apt task to tackle to get my mind in the right frame. I tried to apply my Focus, Commit, Execute, Complete plan to get on track. But to no avail.

I played with Hectic Grandson for quite a while. Then when he was exhausted, I rocked him to sleep. All the while, the idea that I had a blog post to write kept rattling around in my brain. But that was the only thing rattling about…there were no ideas forthcoming. Just empty space with the nagging notion that I needed to write something.

The motivational card that I made when I kicked off the year with Jon Acuff’s 10 Day Do-Over Challenge kept taunting me. Yay, Rah, Siss-boom-bah. If you just write a little bit everyday, everything will work out. That would imply that the creative juices are flowing. Today they are not. Everything else that I have in draft form won’t work. Too much to edit, hone, and word-craft before you get to be subjected to it.

So here I am, writing exactly what’s on my mind. Nothing that I can come up with is giving me enough motivation to write anything Earth-shattering. Part of it has to do with my last night’s sleep. Hectic Grandson ended up in our bed because his Mom wasn’t feeling well. He did fine for a couple of hours, then he woke up disoriented and fussy. That escalated to bawling and at one point shaking, he was so upset. I was able to console him some by walking with him, but at 2AM neither my mind nor my body were really prepared for a lot of walking. After an hour my wife, Hectic Mom/Grandma took over and eventually gave him something to eat. That seemed to calm him. By 4am we had him sleeping quite soundly. The only problem was that his most comfortable position place his food directly in my face, or on the back of my head if I turned over. I tried to move his foot, but that was the spot he resorted to in an effort to regain a comfortable sleeping position. Rather than simply continue to move him, disturbing his sleep…I let his foot remain in my face. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. Having tracked my sleep cycle for a while with my FitBit it was no surprise when I looked at my sleep pattern and it was a crazy mess.

Thus, I’m operating on less sleep than I would have liked…and probably a lot less than my creative brain needs. During my exercise regimen, I have rest days scheduled into the plan. Every so often I don’t do any exercise, but take a day for my body to recharge. Lately, that’s been lacking in my creative regimen. What I mean is, the plan is lacking. Taking time off seems to be all too common…but it just sort of happens, like today. But the unplanned days off don’t seem to let my creative brain recharge. I just can’t seem to get a handle on my creativity…it’s so ethereal.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to take a break every once in a while. Not just a few hours here and there, but rather an entire day (or dare I take two days?) where I don’t require my brain to be creative. A time that I’ve planned to get away from my forced creativity. A scheduled time to recharge.

With the truly hectic nature of my life and my deep-seated desire to grow this blog and my other web ventures, I feel guilty if I’m not working. And by working, I mean working all the time. Heck, while I was on my 10 mile bike ride yesterday, I was listening to Erik Fisher’s excellent podcast Beyond The Todo List and coming up with ideas for the blog. Unfortunately, I still haven’t come up with an adequate solution to recording those ideas while cycling, so I’m struggling to remember them. But the important point is, I don’t really have scheduled down time to let my brain recharge.

It’s no wonder that I’m a mess today. So many things are going on, and through all of it I’m making little notes about things to do for the blog. I’m jotting down ideas for posts. I’m adding items to Todoist of things that need to be done for the business, let alone all the things that need to be done around the house and for the family. I’m never switched off.

Boom…that’s it. I need to plan time to switch off and just chill. To not worry about all the crap that needs to be done. All the grand ideas that I think I should be having. So I’m giving myself permission to start scheduling those times. Time to just be…and not to have to do.

I’m not sure how it’s going to work out, and frankly I don’t know how well I can actually accomplish this, but it’s what’s got me excited for this upcoming week.

There you have it…my Motivational Monday post…about how to just chill and not do anything.

Make it a great week, everybody!