Primarily the problem with vacations is they end. Though I do believe both my wife and I came to the same conclusion after about 11, maybe 12 days, into this one that two weeks is too long for this kind of vacation. This kind being the site seeing touristy kind of vacation. and it wasn’t just the walking and the fact that our week in DC was also the week two different hurricanes also decided to visit (as you can see by the pictures the weather in DC was bad and we did get rained on almost every day we were there.) The weather the second week was absolutely perfect (except for the humidity (Yuck) as you can see by this picture of Lady Liberty herself…

We walked about ten miles a day in our nation’s capital for the first week and saw some amazing sites. I cannot stress this enough that if you are a person living in the United States you should at some point go see Washington DC. Yes it is a bunch of big buildings, and you can see big buildings anywhere, but this is your country’s governmental seat and you should go and take a look at it for that reason alone but there are also a bunch of museums many most of which there is no cost to enter. You do need to coordinate entry with a pass to some of the more popular museums but come on, free entry to our national treasures?

You can’t beat that with a stick as a friend of mine used to say.

Of course you lose a day for travel each way if you are going coast-to-coast as I did, and navigating airports has only gotten less fun over the years, but that is not really that big of a deal. Realistically the trip out, if you are like my wife and I, you are so excited you don’t even pay attention to the hours of your life (which you will never get back) paid to the gods of air travel and the trip back we were so exhausted from vacationing that really we just moved from chair-to-chair until we were at home sitting on the couch.

Now, after a great night’s sleep in my own bed, I find myself full of energy and chomping at the preverbal bit to get back to work. I think part of that could be the second week of our vacasaversary as I have come to call it being spent with my brother-in-law who is quite the prolific writer. He has self published many novels, papers, and I’m pretty sure his day job has something to do with writing or copy writing (which is somehow different). Needless to say we spent many an hour discussing the various writing projects we are working on and the endless number of excuses we come up with to avoid actually competing any of them.

I thought I was bad because I have a story idea (fiction) I first came up with in 2007 which I have worked on and off (mostly off) for the past 16 years but never really got round to finishing, but then he told me about the book he has been writing for the past 25 years and I suddenly didn’t feel so bad.

I do feel like I need to get off my butt and finish the work I started this year. I have the clinical paper, which may not surprise anyone is actually a psychoanalytic interpretation of the haiku, and the book I actually finished the first draft of in February I think. I want to finish the paper by year’s end and then I will have nothing distracting me from the editing process of the book.

but that’s really not true, is it?

As many of you know writing is a passion for some, but something more for others. I like to think of it as a moral imperative but I’m old and stole that line from a movie I saw as a high school kid. Sometimes I feel quite passionate about what I am working on but honestly that doesn’t always have the fire to carry a project through to print. (To print is an old newspaper phrase and I should probably update my repertoire as most things are not even printed anymore let alone showing up in newspapers).

As I have told many a patient over the years, motivation is an emotion whose only job is to get things started. Once a project is underway motivation has done its job and does what emotions are supposed to do after directing behavior, it goes away. Dedication is what is needed to complete a project because not all of what goes into a project, especially a writing project such as what I hope will be at least a moderately well received self help book, is anything but fun and glamorous.

Not only do I have to finish the editing process I have actually not yet started, I also have to find an agent and work with that person to find a publisher and go through all of that not fun sounding stuff.

Oh and lest we forget I also have to work, pay, bills, finish remodeling my house so I can sell it and move, and, and, and, and…..

There is always more to distract someone than encourage their attention to whatever project it is that seems important to them, and very well may be highly important but as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

I did catch a blurb of a video on the instagram which I think summarizes what I am trying to say here quite nicely. It was a speech from Arnold Schwarzeneggar of all people, and which sounded a bit like a key note at a graduation but honestly I have no idea why he was speaking or why anyone thought to record it, but I a glad they did.

What the Guvinator said was simply this, you have plenty of time to do all the things you want to do, to believe otherwise is to give up on yourself. He explained the math a bit like this (forgive me if you have heard the speech and I mess this all up):

Everyone has 24 hours in a day. You have to sleep for 7 of those hours which leaves you with 17 hours. You have to work for 8 of those hours which leaves you with 9 hours. You also have eat and wash and do chores around the house and maybe that takes another 3 hours out of your 24, but it leaves you with 6 hours. Now those 6 hours are when you can build yourself, your body, your mind, your business, your life or are you using those 6 hours to watch television and eat potato chips. How you use those 6 hours each day will determine whether you have a life you want, a life you love, or a life you hate and want to run away from. Everything about your life comes down to how you use those 6 hours.

So how are you going to use your 6 hours?

As for me I am going to divide them between the projects I must finish around my house (the remodels) and my writing. I figure a 50/50 split sounds the most fair to start and as one thing gets done I will add the time to the other side of the equation.

But that is my commitment to myself and I suppose to you my wonderfully appreciated viewing audience.

What are you going to do with your 6 hours? Not what are you willing to do, but what are you actually going to do?

I remember forever ago I was working in a multi-level marketing company (don’t hate me I was desperate) and one of the things they would say at each meeting, usually several times, was simply this–If you want to have what others don’t, you have to do what others won’t.

Most people won’t read, let alone write a book. I think the world needs my words in printed form, but doesn’t the world also need yours?