I don't like math, but I do...sometimes. Sometimes it lets you see amazing things.

I'm obsessed with improving my writing. I'm hellbent on getting so good, my words will make your teeth sing. I want to be so superb, no one will be able to put my books. No one. This is my goal. To take over the world. And so I'm grinding away at it every day, trying to maximize the time I spend on my work, because the more time I spend on it, the better I will get. I have seen a direct correlation to this. Remember I told you about spending 2 hours every morning on learning new words with the help of etymology? Well, that time shrunk to 1 hour, and the file shrunk to half its size! It's working! I'm getting better and faster!

I'm also trying to maximize my reading time, so I decided to calculate what I do every day to see where my time goes. I figure a typical life gets spent like this:

Drawing by Stefan Zsaitsits — Drawing by Stefan Zsaitsits

The last few days I keep stumbling on the same issue that either some of you are expressing to me, or I see others struggling with, which is easy to summarize in the following statement:

"Oh, I want to write a book, but I have no time. There's ... (insert a valid-sounding reason like "millions of dollars to chase for my American dream" or "twenty elderly aunts to take care of" or "scores of TV shows to catch up on" or "hungry triplets to feed from three bottles at once" or whatever.)

So here's the deal. Life is full of busy shit. We're like muckworms squirming in it, fighting for that bit of sun to warm our slimy hides (you can tell writing TUBE is influencing my imagery here). And life is full of people. These people will demand things from you, like help with their own dreams of millions of dollars, or help with changing diapers of their forty elderly uncles, and on and on and on. Unless you employ a stopper for this chatter, IT WILL NEVER CEASE.

What do you spend your life on?

Making time for writing: keep the gates to your mind closed