Last night at the ACFW meeting Nicole Miller gave a great presentation on Social Media and the writer. She spent an hour or so going over all the choices we have these days to go on-line to make friends and influence people. I loved what she said about being genuine. It’s all about relationship building, not just about advertising the products we want to sell.

But several times she said something that made me squirm a bit. I squirmed because I know she’s right and that I’ve allowed on-line time to rob me of something I desperately need: self-discipline. For thirty years I was an elementary school teacher. For all that time I believed I was a disciplined person. I pretty much looked down my nose at people who didn’t work and still couldn’t get all their chores done. I raised two kids, kept a house and still did a good job with a classroom full of children. My days were long and hard and I got it all done. No one told me that when I retired I’d suddenly become a no-good, lazy bum.

Now I get out of bed whenever I like. Sometimes it’s tough to get out the door by 9:00 a.m. I can be found in my jammies sipping coffee and watching tennis matches at all times of the morning. I haven’t sunk so low as to do that in the afternoons….yet.

Seriously, I do a lot of writing. I write devotionals and magazine articles and journal articles and in that realm I am still a responsible citizen. It’s only in fiction that I procrastinate and mess around and waste a lot of time on Facebook and dance around that manuscript that is still so unfinished and unpolished.  So Nicole reminded me that a writer makes time for writing. A writer does not check e-mail ten or twenty times a day, and a writer does not waste hours and hours on social media. She’s right.

I want to manage my time. I want to get back on the discipline wagon and I’m going to do that pretty soon. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after or maybe in the fall when the teachers go back to school and inspire the old me to get my sorry retired self back into some sort of honest schedule. In passing I’ll just mention that my housework discipline also got lost somewhere along the way. I probably need some sort of twelve-step program.

Comments and advice are welcome.