I can plan my week and days in pen, and it's blowing my mind.

My career “sweet spot” was event planning. My top-tier wedding planning product that I provided for my clients was a schedule for the day of the wedding. It has every important person involved in the wedding listed and color-coded. It showed where they needed to be by the MINUTE including travel times.

I moved into live video production for corporate events right as Google+, Facebook, and Instagram were starting to test the waters of live video.

I have recently found one of the final pieces to my “energy puzzle” and I am slowly starting to gain my life back. I say slowly, but within a few weeks of realizing that I am gaining strength and energy, I registered for a college class.

I am also relaunching my website and have started this Substack as a place for me to talk about navigating life and productivity with chronic illness.

It was time to lay out my week and my days if I was going to make this all work.

I started by testing what my capacity was per day and then for the week. I set a specific start time of the day and end time. For a week I started my day at my desk at 9 am and had a “hard stop” at 5 pm. I eat three of my meals at very specific times. I got on the treadmill at 5:30 pm and at dinner by 6:30 pm. I was in bed by 8 pm to read and relax and had “lights off” by 10 pm.

I knew Sundays were pajama days in bed or on the couch.

After a few weeks of tweaking what I could do in a day. (I tested out various dinner and household chore loads.) I came out with a daily schedule and a weekly schedule that has a few days for me to work on school, a few for the website, a day for Substack, a day to create and be crafty, and a day for rest.

I have followed this schedule for a week and the simple fact that I can plan to do something on a Monday and THEN DO IT has me giddy. The fact that I can plan out things I will do at a specific time of day is absolutely MIND BLOWING!

This is a huge sign that I am getting my life back and it’s sometimes too big for me to comprehend.

Getting to this point was my only goal for seven years. As a highly driven person, my instinct is to “list all the goals” and get moving on them.

For now, I will sit comfortably in this space and fine-tune where I am. Focusing on not pushing myself too hard and in turn, allowing myself to value the achievements of my hard work and dedication to my health and quality of life.