12 - misguided illusions of work ethic

After a week of counting my hours, the main thing I've noticed is that my work ethic is not what I thought it was.

I'm in a position right now where I have a lot of free time and the only thing I'm really focusing on doing is writing. And I'll say, I felt like I was writing a lot. A whole darn lot. Like, two or three hours a day minimum.

It might've been because I've felt busy. When I have time like this I don't tend to focus on a single thing for more than two hours at a time (unless it's reading or writing) because it gives my depressions free reign. It gives the impression of a busy day and somewhere in that mix I must have gotten my times mixed up.

Or maybe it's because the time I spend writing feels different. Ten minutes can feel like an hour or it can feel like five seconds depending on how I'm feeling about my work that day. And maybe I just don't have anything much to compare it to: I've never measured how much time I spend writing before. I generally just base it on how long it felt rather than how long it actually was. 

So maybe I'm justified in my misguided illusions of work ethic, but I still found it rather unsettling when, after I spent what felt like the majority of the first day writing, it turned out to only be an hour and a half. The next day was even worse. Only 40 minutes.

I didn't let myself dip too low about it, though.  After the first few days I got used to it and the way I saw it changed. Then it was enlivening, like a breath of fresh air after the storm of little lies I'd used to get away with doing not much at all.

There's no more hiding from myself now. It doesn't matter how much work it felt like, I know exactly how much work it was and I have something to work towards. Something solid, tangible, measurable. If my ill mind is telling me I did a bad job, I don't have to trust it, I can look at my time and know that I've written for three hours today (I have!) and that's good. I'm happy with that.