Wildleaf

When I turned in my letter of resignation on Monday, I was slapped in the face. That slap was in the form of my boss saying he was not accepting my resignation. In the following 2 days negotiations happened. Well, I wasn’t really involved with the negotiations, but my boss at Bear Stearns kept offering me alternatives to me leaving.

I was pretty well set up to leave, and I had decided that I would not look back at his offers. One thing, however, kept popping up. He kept asking me, “What is it that you want?” And I continued to dodge his question and come up with answers. In reality, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I didn’t know why exactly I was unhappy with Bear Stearns. I also didn’t know what I wanted to do in my future.

I had dinner with Jasmine last night, and I brought this up. I want to be able to provide for a family. I want to be happy. I want to be able to play with my grandchildren. I couldn’t put my finger on what I wanted to do for a living. I love working on web pages. I don’t know how far that will take me, and I also don’t know what will happen in 10 years when I need a salary doubled what I need now. Will it progress like that? And even if it does, will I remain to be happy?

I first moved out to New York for the reason of broadening my horizons and get new material for writing. There were more reasons than that, but in that I had failed so far. I have been working on learning to write. I can already write, but I wanted to learn how to do it right before I dove in head first like I had in the past. I bought a new library of books on different aspects of writing. There was the one on learning how to write, the one on character development, the one on plots, and a ton of others. I have been reading how to write for 3 months now. I have been thinking about my characters, the story I want to write and I even began some character outlines for them. What I haven’t done, though, is set apart time to actually write. I needed to be more professional.

So, I spoke to Jasmine about my dilemma. It was a dillemma because I didn’t think I could fit in any more time for my day. I wanted to work out, study the bibile, devote an hour to writing, work, sleep, spend time with my wife. That is a whole lot. Especially considering all I have had time for the last few months has been work, wife, and sleep. We talked about it for a while and decided on some priorities. First is God, then wife, then health, then writing, then work. That is a pretty good order. Now, this isn’t saying that work isn’t important, it is just the easiest to schedule around. I know there are certain times I need to be in work, and outside of that it needs to take the back seat to the others. With that in mind I have planned out a schedule.

5:00 / Wake up
5:00-6:00 / Study Bible
6:15-7:15 / Go to the Gym
7:30-8:30 / Prepare for the day (Shower and Eat, etc)
9:00-5:30 / Work (this could be anywhere between 5:00-6:00 when I leave)
6:00-7:30 / Write
7:30-9:00 / Spend time with wife and read the Bible together
9:00 / Go to sleep for next day.

And that is it. I have ingested some sleeping pills tonight at 9:00 and am setting my alarm for 5:00 to try this new schedule out. It is something completely different than I have ever done before. Hopefully this will encourage some positive change in my life. I should also have a novel completed by next year. That will be exciting.