[Addict]

I decided to work on two projects this summer: a blog and a program. I am also taking two summer classes. I have a few questions about this setup.

1. How can I get people to take my work seriously?

The biggest problem I seem to have is not putting in enough time on these projects. I think it stems from people, including me, not taking my ideas seriously. My plan was to work on these projects on two specific days every week, to dedicate my time on those days to nothing else. This isn't much time to begin with, but everyone sees that I am not going to a job and assumes that I am doing nothing or sitting around playing video games all day. I just work at home, so people interrupt me, ask me to do time consuming tasks, and just don't really understand what I'm trying to do here. None of these occurred when I was employed last semester. I couldn't exactly be asked to clean the house when I wasn't there.What I need is for my friends and family to respect this time just as they would a normal job.

Another issue is sleep. I actually was waking up at 5:00am while I had a job, so I could work out first. I can't seem to get in this routine anymore, mainly because I stay up so late on the weekends. I see my fiancee on the weekends and her schedule is set much later than mine. Has anyone had to deal with this?

Also, I'm not sure how to explain what I'm doing to other people. Most people work a job and I have worked for the past three summers. I tell people that I'm "self employed", but only jokingly. I guess I don't have much confidence in what I'm doing, but I'm trying to do it anyways.

2. Could anyone suggest a better work schedule?

My idea originally was to choose Tuesdays and Thursdays to work on my projects, do school work on MWF(since I have a class on those days), and take off weekends. I thought it would be really important to separate my different activities, so they didn't blend into each other(which ended up happening quite often). I have a few options. One is to work continuously on all academic or personal tasks until my plate is cleared. It seems that I would be mentally more free in this situation because I wouldn't have those less important tasks hanging over my head. This doesn't guarantee any time for what I really want to do though.


Perhaps it was a bad idea to try to work on two projects simultaneously. I figured that I could update the blog regularly and spend the bulk of my time on my program. But writing entries takes a lot more time than I expected! Because of interruptions, distractions, and bad scheduling, I haven't put much time into my projects at all. Next semester, I'll be working again and I really want to make some sort of progress before that. I would really like to hear from people that have tried to pursue their own projects while juggling a lot of other things.