For almost a year now I have been working full time at Q - in the numbers and repetition vein. And I have been working part time as a research assistant at Concordia. Full time + part time = > overtime threshold. But because my work was split between two employers, did not garner over time. Did garner exhaustion.

As of this week, I have cut the full time back to part time: Monday and Tuesday, leaving me the rest of the week for my research assistance… and my own devices. The two day week is a strange one. Yesterday was Monday. Today is pseudo-Friday. I like that.

More available time will allow me to hire myself, and do work towards my own entrepreneurial ends. I’ve been burning myself out. It hit me: for the benefit of who?

So I have taken a temporary pay cut in order to reinvest in myself. I was inspired by a post at The Art of Manliness. Benjamin Franklin had a checklist system for tracking his “Quest for Moral Perfection.”

I like the idea of a daily checklist. Rows of virtues are crossed with 7 columns for the days of the week. Rather than working for a gold star: poor performance is marked with a black dot. Was that Treasure Island where the pirates handed out “the black dot” of doom? I like a checklist, but I like a pirate-spun checklist even more.

Long story short, I’ve made a list of things I wish to attend to daily. Before I go to bed, I will take a few moments of self-atonement. One objective is to post more. So here I am, half-past eleven, dodging the dot before I turn in. What a crazy fast work week.