BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Life Coaching Help Jilly Schedule her Life! :-)

Wanting to simplify our lives, Dan and I moved into our RV fulltime. This has been helpful in terms of having less stuff, and less stress. It's been a lot of work to learn about the lifestyle, but i am getting a handle on things.

Now it's time for me to think about how to add activities back into my life and I'd love help figuring this out. I have a tendency to to take on a zillion fun projects and overwhelm myself. I don't want to take anything else back on until I weighed it as something I really want to do with my time.

These are the things that I could potentially have in my daily-ish existence:

- Learning RV stuff. I enjoy this and can happily sit outside with my manuals, catalogs, books and magazines each day, for hours. I will want to keep this activity going because it's fun for me and useful for us.

- Enjoying the RV resorts. These rv parks have pools, spas, fitness rooms, places to walk and run, activities, games, mini-golf, shuffleboard, etc. Since we are doing this lifestyle and everything is here and available, I do want to enjoy what is around me, even if it's just a little bit each day. I'd like to share some of this time with Dan, too.

- Working on Mused. I have been on a sabbatical from editing the bellaonline literary mag and I miss it. It's a creative endeavor that creates a lovely product.

- Writing for my topics here on Bellaonline. I need to get back on a weekly schedule and put the effort into making the topics shine.

- Work on my blogs. My personal blogs and misc projects have completely fallen into ghost towns - I have not touched them since before the whole "move into an RV" thing occurred to change everything. I don't know if I need/want to put any effort into them right now, but i hate for things to be sticking around in limbo.

- Fixing the RV. There is much still to do that needs to me to make phone calls, do research, buy supplies, set appointments, get quotes, and make actual hands-on repairs.

- Planning RV trips. This is a lot of fun and something that needs to be done anyway.

- Painting and crafts. I love to work on these kinds of things but just end up NOT doing them. It always seems there is something more important/pressing to do.

- Life stuff/errands. Things like dr appts, dentists, bathing the dogs, laundry, food shopping, running out the recycling, returning things to stores, going to the post office, cleaning the RV.

- Filing. More life stuff - the paperwork variety. Taxes, road logs, campground and RV maint logs, business things, print out and read work things, make a business planning calendar, etc.

- Spend time with hubby. It's funny; we spend all our time together but don't actually do activities together. The only things we really do for fun is watch Farscape each night (or whatever series we are working our way through).

- Yoga. I love it and have not set aside time for it an ages.

- Let me think about what other things i might be missing.

If anyone has any suggestions for me on how to arrange things, i'd love to hear it. It would really be easy for me to fill up my time with freelance writing/blogging work, but i don't know if i want to go in that direction or not. Help! :-)

Hey, Jilly!

Good to see you back here! I've been sporadic at best lately myself, too, and only have a second here as I'm working on graduations.

However, wanted to say "hi" and hope you're enjoying the new lifestyle!

As to helping with your schedule, my first thought is go back to the priorities and see what's in line there. Some may need changing, but I think it's a good starting point!

Much luck!

Hi Deb! The Rving is awesome. :-)

I don't want to go thru the priorities right now; just looking for some discussion to think about. :-)

Ah. For example, I have an offer for a blogging gig that is only 200 words, twice a week, for $15 each. I need to decide this week. Do i want to fill up my time with this kind of thing? I don't know anymore.

I have to admit that my first thought too was to sit down and list your priorities All of those activities are interesting, but they're all just "end results" of a variety of priorities. If we knew what your priorities were, then choosing the matching activities would be easy!

How about just the next two weeks. What do you feel are priorities for those two weeks? Are there things that are really important to do soon?

For example if in the future you guys will be roaming via RV and staying on the side of the road, then enjoying the cool amenities here would be a priority for me. Might as well enjoy them while you have them! And you can do that with Dan and also achieve your be-together priority!

I really just want to discuss this stuff i listed. I want to hear what other people's POVs are to bounce ideas off of. Please indulge me. :-) I have been working on the Five Things a Week, for example, and that is going well.

What I really want to do is nothing. Just enjoy myself. But i don't know if I will feel guilty, or useless, sluglike. is it fair to just enjoy myself?

OK so just to clarify you want to hear if WE were in your position what WE would want to do? I can do that That's a very different question to me!

If I was living in an RV ... I would take advantage of the cool things around me right now, since I wasn't going to be there forever. I would explore something each day. As part of my exploration I would take photos, or write poems, or draw images, to involve my creative soul in the current spot. It would create a visual record of the interesting places I'd gone.

I would encourage my boyfriend to take photos with me, he likes photography. So that would have us spend time together.

I would do yoga each morning, somewhere in camp. It would be my celebration of the location.

Jilly - with everything you have been going through and all the stress you SHOULD spend the time relaxing. It's not about being a slug. It's about allowing your body to recharge and become healthy. It is a critical, necessary part of your cycle. Focus on becoming rested!

You have traded one lifestyle for another which will be filled with many new experiences.

Hmmm, I think I am getting somewhere. This is really helpful. I have been thinking about what Lisa said, and then sat down with DH and asked his opinion. He said I should make painting a priority, and add in only whatever else I have been dreaming about. So...okay.

In my fantasy, I'd like to spend time each day on yoga, working out and running, enjoying the resorts, reading/learning new things, and doing painting/photography.

I'd like to spend much more time with Dan, maybe doing romantic things. It's been a pretty long time since we have related in that kind of way.

I will work on my Five Things each week, RV stuff as needed, and planning our trips. I will work on my BellaOnline topics. Not sure about Mused.

So my priorities along these lines are being creative, peaceful, fit, and being more loving with my partner.

Not sure how my priority of being productive will fit in. What IS being productive, anyway?

Okay, I just made myself a post-it saying:

Creative
Peaceful
Fit
Loving
Productive

I hung it by my morning/evening routine schedules to glance at as needed throughout the day. I can look at it each time I am trying to figure out how to create my day, and see if everything aligns with those priorities.

Jilly, being productive is about producing results, usually. So, for you, it could be producing relaxation, producing a romantic evening, producing a creative piece--an article, a painting, a photo, whatever.

To me, productivity is about getting your stuff done, whatever that "stuff" is.

I think you already are all those descriptors, Jilly!

I know, outside looking in, but really, you are, which is what the gurus teach is, isn't it! LOL

Now, if I could just realize the same "stuff" for me!

Deb, that is so sweet of you to say. It's funny how differently others see us than how we view ourselves. :-)

I think of you as a super productive person, for example. I hope you see yourself that way.

Hmmm, 'producing relaxation'.... interesting idea. Today I am working on getting small but necessary things done. It's going well. And then i will take a look at my Five Things List and see how this week's is coming, plus write next week's.

Hi Jilly:

Thanks so much for starting this discussion. Figuring out **how** we�re going to do all that we want/need to do is one of life�s major dilemmas.

I noticed that much of what you listed can be grouped together. Reading the RV mags, enjoying the RV lifestyle etc can be grouped together the same way you grouped together all of the chores.

I think I noticed five groups. 1) New lifestyle exploration 2)time with hubby 3) writing/editing 4)wellness 5)chores. Forgive me if I missed a category. What I would do if I were you is to do one or two things from each category every single day. Even if it's only for a few minutes. And I'd try to combine things like walking to the grocery store counts as a chore and a wellness exercise. If you do some of the RV resort things with your husband again, you've taken care of two things at once.

In my own life what I've done is to assign a priority to each day. For example today is my long fiction day, yesterday was blog, amazon and internet instruction day. Monday is my short story day.

Here's the thing and this is so important. Just because Wednesday means that long fiction is the priority does not mean I spend the most time on it. I know this seems contradictory but it works. I�ve written whole novels writing 10-20 minutes a day. The reality is that I actually spent the lion share of my day in an office completely concentrating on a project I'm consulting on, but I will not go to bed unless I've worked on one of my novels for at least 10 minutes.

In other words I don't think it's always about the time you spend on something--unless you have a set in stone deadline--rather it's about your consistency.

Oh and use some of those things you love to treat yourself when you�ve worked on something you�ve been putting off. For example. I LOVE to look up books/people/ideas etc on the internet, could do it all day long, but I say to myself Leah, first edit/write these pages FIRST then treat yourself to a google search. LOL.

Again thanks for sharing. I�m looking forward to hearing about your progress.

Okay, re-reading this thread. What are people's POV on these elements (ie - what would you all do?):



Oh, and this one:

Leah, that is AWESOME information. You are so cool. I really appreciated this idea:



It's a neat idea to think about assigning a project to certain days, even if it means to get just a little bit of it done.

Let me mull over that.

Jilly,

For example, I'd devote one day a week to each effort ie

Monday--Mused
Tuesday--Bella topics
Wednesday--Blogs

For the priority project, I'd work on it for say two or three days a week. For example Bella--Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

When you think of it ALL at once, it all seems overwhelming. Instead just focus on each topic for a specified period of time on specific days.

Also as Lisa always suggests, carry a pen and notebook with you and throughout the day if you have an idea, figure out where it fits. Is it a Bella article a blog topic etc? write it down, keep track of your ideas so when you sit down to focus on the project, you can just write instead of trying to figure out what you're going to write about, you already know.

Please keep us posted on your progress.

My mother's sister in law prepared seven dishes - each night of the week it was the same thing - She cooked the same things for 50 years. She was organized - a little boring but organized.

Angie,

Your mother's sister-in-law was like Einstein. Don't know if this is true or not, but I saw a movie that said he had several sets of the same exact clothes. So when he got up in the morning there was no consternation over what he was going to wear. LOL. He was going to wear the same thing he wore yesterday and the day before and the day before that. LOL.

I do a version of this with black pants. Almost all of my pants are black. But I live in New York and everyone wears black plants every day. LOL

Jilly,

I just thought of something else as I was working this morning. I recently started the practice of working on three Bella articles at once. And that's how I think of them as ONE thing and I list them as such on my to-do list. For example this week I'm working on these three articles

April is Stress Awareness Month/May is Family Wellness Month/ See the Good in a Bad Situation.

I list them just like that on my to-do list and I work on all three of them together. I open one work on it for ten to twenty minutes minutes. Close it and open the next one. Then the next. And I do this just about every day. I devote specific days to fiction, but I work on my self-help stuff just about every day.

Now the first two articles are basically straight research and I'll finish them first and post them. Then "See the Good in a Bad" situation will move to the forefront and I'll add two more articles to the to list to accompany the article I'm still not finished with. So I can take as much time as I need with that particular article as I'm working on others.

I also use the same exact approach to the magazine queries I'm sending out now. I work on three at the same time. And also I think of them all as one thing. Not as three different queries but as one project with many facets.

My mother once asked me "how many places are you writing for now?" And I told her. "I don't even know." LOL. Then I sat down and made an acronym. BASHT CN MA WA SS P. Each letter stands for either a website or publication I write for or a major aspect of my life. The B stands for Bella and the P is for parenting.

I have to categorize things, work on several things at once etc and these are my keys to productivity...and sanity. LOL

What I do is write several articles at once, on a theme. So I will sit down and write three egg recipes for example, and post-date them. So I dedicate let's say an hour to the task and write them out. I tend to write quickly but let's say it takes you two hours. At that point you are done, and your site is set for 3 weeks!

Alternately, if you like small time periods rather than large time periods, you can work on an article for 20 minutes a day. Maybe while you sip your morning tea or something. By the end of the week you have a great article, and it was never a "big block of time" for you!

It all depends on what your personal style is.

With Mused for example I really enjoy reading the poetry. So once a week I sit down with some tea and read through a few poems. It is gentle, relaxing, and the time breezes by. It's a nice refreshing creative activity. Some weeks there aren't any poems at all so I spend the time reading a poetry magazine or something, to keep my brain in tune. I consider that my "poetry time"! It's not "work" or "a chore" to me, it's something I look forward to and really doesn't take up much time at all.

That's interesting Lisa,

I haven't been able to write on a theme, unless I space the articles. The articles I work on at the same time are all on different topics. This week the topics are consistency, meditation and small pleasures.

Update June 09: So my system has been mostly ~

Monday - sleeping
Tuesday - hike
Wed - sit in the sun and read
Thurs - napping
Friday - organize the RV
Sat - more sleeping
Sun - watch birds do bird things and wander around

It's been pretty good. I highly recommend this routine to people who feel like they are broken inside and need lots of internal, unbothered, quiet time.

It's been so successful that I ACTUALLY feel like writing again. And working on my inbox, answering emails and thinking about possible ways to make money. The best part is no one is pushing me...it's just coming out organically. I feel like doing things again.

I hope I have really found a turning point for myself, but i don't want to put out too much hope into it...I will just roll with what is given. :-)

Jilly that is *great* that you are giving yourself the much needed time to rest, heal and renew after the churning changes you have been through. You definitely need to allow your brain to rest and recuperate. Give yourself time.

Thank you. It sounds silly and selfish on the surface, but really, it's what i've been needing. I should write a book on the virtues of actually allowing one's self to STOP for awhile. Just STOP. Get off the boat. You know?

I know I was jealous reading your schedule!

I've been paddling with half of one oar for awhile now. And, sometimes, I've even dropped that oar.

I think that's why I've been sick so much, gained so much weight and can't seem to stay ahead of the snowball.

Deb, the boat will find its way downstream and eventually you can crawl off. Doesn't that sound like a nice dream?

Modern life is very....full. (there. i didn't have to move my bracelet).

Jilly you are exactly right. You did the work of 10 people for the past few months. Now you deserve to rest for quite a while

We will call the book, Get off the Boat. Or, the Virtues of Doing Nothing.

But then maybe writing the book will negate the doing of the nothing....

That schedule sounds very relaxing and rejuvinating. I like the bird watching part. It's nice to just walk around and enjoy your surroundings. I think I'd like to get a book about city landscaping. Whenever I walk past a park or plaza in Brooklyn, I just stand there for a moment and absorb it all.

Yeah. But it's flexible too: sometimes I watch birds on other days and take naps later.