you all know the saying, “reach for the stars, but settle for the moon.” i strain for the stars, and when i make it only so far as the moon, i sulk on the dark side, lamenting that the lights have proliferated across the sky and are still so very far away. i list the tasks i want to accomplish each week, and never fail to berate myself for all those things that i couldn’t check off.

inspired by my self-inflicted wounds, i tried the following eye-opening exercise: yesterday i sat down and calculated how many hours it would take for me to achieve everything that i’d like to do each week. i measured this against how many hours i actually have to do stuff during the week. when i added the numbers up, the hours-needed were about double the hours-available.

i painstakingly whittled away at my goals (e.g. no reading beowulf in the original old english until next year), pushed my bedtime a little later, and so forth, until the two columns matched up exactly–but i left no time for polite conversation, meals, bathroom breaks, shopping for used ipods on e-bay, etc. my blocks of allotted time were stacked tighter than the stones of the pyramids.

in desperation, i added three days to my schedule. i now operate on a ten-day schedule. i think i have enough time now.

there are precedents for ten-day weeks–the ancient japanese operated on months divided into three periods: the upper-, middle-, and lower- month. i’m writing this post in the middle of january’s “lower ten days.”

i’m not quite sure how i’ll reconcile this with the rest of the world’s 7-day week (even the japanese dumped the 10-day version long ago), but instead of worrying about that, i’m planning to at least make it as far as jupiter or saturn. and i’ll keep half an eye on the stars beyond::