Am I Better than I was Yesterday?

This has so far been an okay summer, but I don't think I'm putting as much time into things I think are important as I should be. Many times I find that my time is absolutely wasted and that instead of getting better and becoming more, I have somehow atrophied. My TV is on way too often and I spend hours playing old SNES games on my emulator instead of working on my reading list. I've gone so far as to map out a running route that is almost exactly one mile but have never used it even once. I have NOT written down or analyzed what I think is important, and I have NOT written down short-term goals for my summer.

This past school year, I wrote down about eight philosophies of living that I thought were worth forming my life around, and I have lost the sticky notes I wrote them down on. Hopefully in future entries I can reconstruct them and submit them on this blog for others and myself to read and evaluate. I have had a very relaxing summer, but relaxation is miserable when there's no meaningful work to relax from. My job at Foodlion hardly qualifies as meaningful since I feel like I'm doing a lot of cyclic work that just has to be done again in a few days. Ha! But that's what I signed up for when I decided I want the money it brings. That money, though it seems pointless now, will help me take care of small expenses in the future and keep a healthy reserve of emergency funds the bank.

But, then, I have many days when I'm NOT at work, and many free hours on work days, besides. At the pistol-start of summer, I begged my mother to help me put together a work station for the summer where I could do my goal setting and writing and studying and communication. It took rearrangement of my room, the addition of a ghetto white plastic table, and tucked away metal chair (looks nice but could use a cushion) to pull it off, but all the effort came through in flying colors! SO WHY AM I NOT USING IT! I play games and waste time, but that's not exactly what I had in mind when I asked for it.

So, you see, though I'm having a fine summer, I still think it could be a lot better with a few tweaks and adjustments. I think a good thing to do would be to really start scheduling on Google Calendar again; making to-do lists and blocking out my time so that I can see what I can actually get done. It worked great before, and summer is as good of a time to as any to get rolling again!

I want to always be able to answer YES when I ask myself the question: "Am I better than I was yesterday?"