Today's Word: "Tsuris"

Tsuris is a great word, an exotic way of saying turmoil without sounding whiny.

Tsuris describes my last month with regard to the blog, and at the risk of still sounding whiny, I'll tell you that I've been torn about continuing this push. Other than submitting to the Nicholl and the Austin Film Festival contests, I haven't accomplished squat. In fact, I've been so conflicted about this push from the beginning that I'm not surprised that's all I've gotten done (at least I managed to drop the soul-sucking job I'd had for something more promising). This last month, I've taken a leave from writing just to concentrate on the other aspects of life. I celebrated five years of marriage to a great girl, took a few days off with the family to Vermont and started the physical process of getting our living space ready for the new baby.

Wow, I buried the lead there, didn't I? We're expecting a daughter right around January 1st. My wife tells me I'm full of crap, but I really didn't have a preference what sex the baby would be, but now that we know it's a girl, I'm thrilled, it feels right. The Prince is fantastic with babies, so I'm looking forward to seeing the shift in dynamics in our little family (although none of us can be described as little).

And here I am at the end of September, spending too much time watching baseball, not being able to concentrate on anything, feeling dumpy and disappointed about writing but excited about everything else. If writing were a girlfriend, she'd have dumped me by now for ignoring her.

The problem I'm having now is that I don't know if I'd want her back.

Whenever I've faced a crisis like this, I've usually not known what to blame other than broadly blaming myself (there's a confidence booster), but in the past year I've come to grips with the idea that my lack of organization and scheduling of my life has been most of the cause of my disappointments. Do any of you utilize any organizational ideas/platforms/tricks/methods that you can recommend? I'd be interested in hearing what has worked for you.

One thing I've read over the past month that has inspired me came from a source I'd at first been surprised by, but since then have realized makes a lot of sense considering the career he's had: Jerry Seinfeld. The success this man has had bears the earmark of hard work, and some years ago when he was asked for advice on how to become a better comic, below in italics was his reply as posted online by the man who'd asked him, software developer Brad Isaac. My first plan of attack is to schedule my day with what I need to get done, then to follow the advice Jerry gave Brad way back when for each of those tasks. Whether writing will be one of those tasks is what I'm unsure about at the moment.

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself - even when you don't feel like it.

He then revealed a unique calendar system he was using pressure himself to write.

Here's how it worked.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain." He said again for emphasis.

This is a method that's probably been handed down by others for years and years, way back to Socrates telling a student to cover a wall in clay and get a big stylus, but when I read this it felt like a bubble had been burst. If it does the same for you, I'm happy to have passed this on.