Time's A-Wastin' and I Hate It!

I'm not the kind of guy who wastes a lot of time. At least I have myself convinced of that. If I have stuff to do, I want to get it done. I'll wake myself up at four o'clock in the morning with thoughts of all the things piled on my plate. Does this cause some stress? Why, yes, it does. That I don't have an ulcer or a nervous tick of some sort is amazing.

Of all the things I have to do, producing work that translates into a payday is numero uno on the list. I often know when an assignment will be issued or a story idea accepted by my largest client. Usually these are fruits of some event they have sent me to cover. Other times it's because they have asked for a specific story, but I still must pitch that story through their third-party content organizer. On the surface, that may sound silly, but it's through this same content organizer I must submit finished stores and, most importantly, it's through this content organizer that I am paid. So, every story must begin at the beginning, which is submitting the idea for approval. When it's a story they have requested, I know it will be approved and I write it.

Despite this drive to get paying work done ASAP, I still manage to procrastinate when it comes to chores around the house, such as renovation projects and so forth.

I am less likely to put off doing work-type projects, but some are more important to me than others. My two video projects fall in right behind paying assignments in terms of importance. I have a backlog of just3things videos to edit. Currently, I have perhaps eight unedited videos for that Website. I make it a point to edit at least one a week. This isn't a huge effort. On average, editing a j3t video takes from 90 minutes to two hours.

Then there is my new video project: BEER2WHISKEY. This is for a YouTube channel of the same name. I post a new video there at noon every Thursday. Although, eventually I will have a series of shorter videos in the three-to-four-minute range, the videos shot and edited so far range from 9 to 15 minutes. These require three or four hours to edit.

Of the things I like to do, writing a post for this blog is at the bottom of the list. That's why, despite making a vow to write a new post every week in 2017, I'm back to writing two or so a month. As I am doing today, I typically write for Clanging Bell on Sunday mornings. If I'm jammed up with paying assignments or behind in editing videos, that's what I do on Sunday mornings rather than create a new blog post.

Bringing up the rear in this creative scrum is writing car reviews. Many weeks I knock out as many as six or seven assignments for my biggest paying client. Even I can grow weary of writing about cars. I need to massage a different area of my creativity. After writing two or three thousand words of auto content for pay, I just don't have the steam left in me to write another eight hundred words on some new car I have just driven. Does that make me a bad person?

So, back to my opening statement that I don't like to waste time. I don't. I don't like covering the same ground twice, either. Although I didn't post anything new to Clanging Bell last week, I did write a new post last Monday morning. I just didn't post it to the blog.

It was a nine-hundred-word rant on the Steelers refusing to leave their locker room for the national anthem before their game last week with the Chicago Bears. Having been a Steelers fan off and on for more than half a century, I was more than disappointed by their actions last week. But, I decided as I prepared to write my very first post to this site six or seven years ago, that I wouldn't use it as space to air my political views. Who cares anyway, right?

So, I did write about 900 words last week, but after thinking about my pledge not to politicize Clanging Bell, I didn't post those words to the site. After a full week of reflection, I made the right choice. Now, though, I am kicking myself for wasting the time to write that post. 

I do hate wasting time. I say that as I prepare to head to my Sunday watering hole Smoke on the Water in downtown Greenville for a couple of beers. Here's the thing: Now that I have my BEER2WHISKEY channel on YouTube, sipping a beer or two is really research, isn't it? I'm honing my craft. At least that's how I'm going to look at it going forward.

I'm not wasting time; I'm doing research! I feel better about myself already.