I have always been a creature of routine; planners, calendars, and strict regimens. I thrive under intense stress and pressure and I tend to get restless and uncomfortable in situations where I’m expected to relax. So, being unemployed for me poses the issue of, “I feel like I should be moving forward and doing something.” Which is why, this time around I decided to focus primarily on my writing and create my own schedule that I follow daily.

8 AM: Wake up with my alarm, meander into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, and make my way to the living room to write.

8:15 AM: Light the candle and incense on my altar, turn on my Himalayan salt lamp, and start doing some light stretching/yoga.

8:30 AM: Sit down with my laptop and cup of coffee and start to write the article for the day. This can take me anywhere from one to a few hours to do depending upon what I’m writing about. I will typically keep the candle and incense lit while I’m writing, letting the incense burn out on its own.

10 AM: Run errands that need to happen for the day; this will consist of things like grocery shopping, going to the post office, making a trip to Home Depot for a very specific type of light bulb (as was my day yesterday), and anything else that needs to get done outside the house.

12 PM: Lunch of some kind, depending upon whether or not the lovely boyfriend is home at the moment, either eating with him or eating by myself and taking some time to binge watch Netflix like the garbage person that I am.

1 PM: Dishes and cleaning. Our apartment is typically pretty clean, I attribute this to the minimalism that I’ve employed in our lives as well as my absurd levels of OCD that prevent me from relaxing if things get too messy. Regardless of the reason, this doesn’t usually take more than an hour or so because typically I just need to do a few dishes, pick up a couple things, wipe down counters, and vacuum the floors if needed.

2 PM: Realistically, this is when I’d start working on my book. I’ve been pretty good about being productive during this time; mostly applying for seasonal jobs and scouring the internet for writing gigs. But, I’d like to try and dedicate these several hours, if not more, to writing my book daily. I’m typically solid once I actually sit down to work on things, but with something as personally paced as my novel that I’m writing, I tend to have a hard time sitting down and actually getting started.

6 PM: Dinner. This is usually when Gordon will start making dinner and I will wrap up whatever I’m working on at the time so we can sit together and eat. Recently, we’ve been catching my weeb ass up on Naruto (which is fantastic by the way, 10/10 would recommend).

After dinner, the evening can diverge into several different possible scenarios. Sometimes, I will sit down and play video games, recently it’s been Stardew Valley and Bioshock. Other times I will lay down and watch Netflix either in the living room or in bed while Gordon plays Red Dead Redemption 2 and yells at his horse for running into things. I’ve also been reading a bit more recently, so that’s been nice; so this is the time where I might do that. And other times I will scroll on Tik Tok until Gordon has to tell me to stop, because there is an endless flow of content and I will never run out of short, lip-syncing videos to watch.

Gordon thinks that Tik Tok incentivizes my depression, by rewarding me for laying down and staring at my phone for hours. He’s right, but it’s so goddamn entertaining.

It seems like this article is just turning into a stream of consciousness/day in the life piece. It’s not really my typical M.O. but vloggers do it all the time and get millions of views, so why not switch it back to the traditional blogging format? I’d start a YouTube vlogging channel if I didn’t know how much editing I’d need to do. I like to think that I’m moderately entertaining even while doing dull tasks, but sitting down and editing a daily vlog to post the next day is just an amount of patience that I do not possess. For now I think I will stick to blogging.

Obviously, this schedule is just a rough idea of what my normal day to day looks like; a best case scenario if you will. There are days where no cleaning gets done and my day is spent watching Netflix or playing Bioshock for 6 hours (real number by the way, I’m almost done with the first Bioshock), but I’ve come to realize that “it be like that sometimes”. There are some days where you are productive, on your game, pumping out results for writing, or your job, or whatever it is you do, and you feel like you’re on top of the world. Then there are days that make you feel like the laziest piece of shit on the planet; nothing gets done and you feel like you’re wasting your day but you can’t manage to do anything about it. But the truth is that most days are somewhere in the middle I suppose.

I adore watching the “Daily Schedule” YouTube videos that minimalist vloggers and Instagram influencers post all the time, and I get the feeling that I’m not the only one who watches those when I feel like I need inspiration. But when watching those and thinking to myself about how great their lives seem, I have to stop and remind myself that those videos are, just like my daily schedule, a best case scenario; highly edited and stitched together to look like a movie. That life is not like that because things happen; people have off days or they don’t know what direction they want to take in their lives. But all the while they continue to post about the ideal versions of their lives, probably hoping that one day they will start to believe that those videos are what their lives are actually like.

I relate very heavily to Diane Nguyen; Diane is a character in the Netflix original series BoJack Horseman. If you have not yet had a chance to watch BoJack Horseman, I highly suggest it, that show will kick you in the heart and make you feel things despite the fact that it’s a show about an animated horse. Anyway, Diane is a writer who is first introduced into the show in Season 1 to help BoJack write his memoir, and as the series progresses she begins to change what she is writing about, get jobs that help her move toward the goals she wants in life and grow as a writer and a person. However, throughout all of this, she deals with her impostor syndrome, depression, anxiety, and general feelings of being lost.

That’s one of the things I really like about this show; the fact that it focuses on real life problems, characters that could be real people, and how they deal with their every day lives. I think that something that I’ve realized is that the things that most people present to the world every day are not 100% genuine. Nobody, not your friends, not celebrities, and not fictional characters in a show about an alcoholic talking horse, is perfect; even if that’s the face they put out into the world. So, yes the schedule that I created for myself is what I’m aspiring to do everyday, and yes, it works out that way probably about 70% of the time. But sometimes it doesn’t, and I don’t think I want to edit those parts out.

It may be less popular to throw in the less than stellar pieces of life into blogs, vlogs, or anything forward facing that you’re going to show to other people; but if I’m going to pursue being a writer and moving forward on this path, I want to be genuine. I may lose people who would rather read blogs about “how to keep a positive attitude even when you are falling apart” or who expect consistently positive content because if I’m going to keep my promise to myself about writing everyday, there will be days where what I publish won’t be positive. But it’s important to me that I keep that promise to myself, and I think it’s important for other people to see and understand that everyone has days where they feel less than great and may beat themselves up.

Yes, it would be easier to edit my life around the positive and do the whole “clout chaser” thing that other influencers do. But I think that if I’m going to do anything worth doing, I should do it in a way that makes me happy and keeps me satisfied with the content I’m putting out. I will just have to believe that the people reading feel the same way.