Check!

Whaddaya think? Once a teacher always a teacher? Once an eight-year-old always an eight-year-old? Whatever it is, I have wanted and wanted and wanted a way to keep track of my always too-flexible tasks and obligations and goals.

You know the recommendation, right? Everyone says it. Keep a record. Keep a food diary. Keep an exercise log. Keep a calendar. Keep a schedule.

(groan ...)

It's not just this quarter's online course (no regular hours for study, but deadlines for assignments) and the goals of other outside work for school, together with sub hours at the library (ditto the irregular schedule) ... it's not just the desire to keep track of simple things like vitamins and exercise (seriously - I forget to eat) ... it's not even the writerly bewilderment that makes me sing, "Where did the ideas go, Long time pa-a-sing? Where did the ideas go? I used to know."

It's everything. It's the fact that a lot of my life proceeds by the clock, but on top of the clock's ticking there is a flux that works like a tide with no table. And I am tired of getting a mouthful of water and a tangle of weeds wrapped around my ankles every time things shift again.

So ... there it is. (You can click on it to make it big, right?) I saw someone else's and I made one for myself. There are no clock times on this Habit Keeper. It's not about when I do this stuff. It's about doing it at all. I've written my various activities (not the specifics of how or when - just the names of the things I do) across the top, in those slanty slots, and there are only four blank places for things I didn't think of today. ALL of the things are things I've obligated myself to do, and I know I won't get to each one of them every day. But at least this way, when I check something off, I'll have some sort of record of what on earth I'm doing with my time.

All it's going to take now is remembering to make the mark on the page.