Operation Achieve Anything: Day One-Hundred-Ninety-One, Dateline 7-10-2018

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart you can’t utter.
— James Earl Jones

Good morning Crickets. Welcome to day number one-hundred-ninety-one of Operation Achieve Anything. Though yesterday turned out to be a complete disaster, following a very successful weekend, I think I'm on the right track to finally figure the sciatica schedule out. For those of you not playing along at home, my sciatica started to act up a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm to the point where I can not sit in my chair for more than a couple of minutes before my entire left leg feels like it's on fire.

For most of last week, I started to work from bed, lying on my stomach, resting on my elbows while I typed. At first, it was taking me ten to twelve hours to complete what's usually a six to eight-hour day. Thankfully, I had the Fourth of July off from my day job and then called in sick on Friday because I think I would be a miserable man right now if I worked at that pace for all five days of the week.

It also helped that by Saturday, I was feeling a bit better from my bed rest to where I could start sitting at different angles to increase the speed of my work. On Saturday, after midnight, I started my Sunday obligation as if I were working the graveyard shift. This allowed me to awake to a completed workload allowing me to take the first full day off from everything in close to five years.

Normally, even when I take my time off of paid work, I still have my personal projects to fill my time and I'm so obsessive that I've developed anxiety when I don't feel like I'm being productive with my time. It's so bad that I could not sleep early in the AM after finishing Sunday's work because I couldn't stop thinking of the fact that nothing needed to be done. I was so confused by not doing nothing that I kept insisting I was confused as to what day it was and thought for sure the day would be ruined when I found out it was Monday and I had my day job to do.

Nope, that wasn't the case. I finally did fall asleep, only to end up unable to sleep in. Thankfully my schedule was clear because I did absolutely nothing. Not only was it the first day that I successfully avoided work but as I said in yesterday's post, I also managed to avoid the internet, well, other than as a tool for watching my shows. Other than that, I avoided my email, social media, and online news. This aspect of taking a break may have actually been nicer than taking the break from work.

I then napped the rest of the day with the plan to start Monday's obligations at midnight, only the fact that I was so confused about what to do with my time, when midnight struck, all I wanted to do was crash. I decided to take a midnight nap and get to work the second I woke, but unfortunately, that time didn't come until 8:30 in the AM. Leave it to me to sleep in the one day I failed to stay up late.

This really screwed me up and I spent the rest of the day rushing to get things done while thrashing around in my bed trying to find the most comfortable way to type. Now, I'm back to the graveyard schedule where I hope to blog my days worth of work after midnight to then work on the day job when I awake. Where when I'm sitting at my desk, I have not problem typing for six to eight hours straight but while typing from bed, I really need to break up my day and think this is the best way to get that to work.

Now I can break up my day into two four hour work periods, one chunk for paid work, the other for this blog. I really hope that splitting things up to add more downtime between tasks will help to speed up the healing process. Speaking of tasks, let dig into the assignments I'm here to report on.

Yesterday's lesson didn't really have a task involved, I was just supposed to continue to think about information vs. knowledge and how technology can be fun but can also be damaging if not kept in check. This line of thinking is the main reason why I took Sunday off from everything, so I'm going to consider this assignment to be done.

As for today, this may have been the first time I really wanted the book to ask me to explore the quote of the day about how hard it is to have words in your heart that you just cannot say. I have a lot to say on this subject but unfortunately, this was just the book's jump off point to explain how the great voice-over actor James Earl Jones used to barely speak because of his stutter.

Rather than explore the idea of the quote in terms of myself, the book just suggest that I journal about any obstacle that may be in my way throughout the day, and how I plan to overcome them. Of course, I'll probably do what I want but you'll have to wait for tomorrow's update to see what I manage to come up with. Until then, it's time for me to sign off as usual by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.