I don’t know about you, but I often wish I had the life of a cat or a dog. I roam around the house, chillin, eatin, poopin, peein, sleepin. That’s about it. And it would be a dog, so I can play a little more than just eat, sleep and waste. Of course, this life is not for me given my athletic lifestyle, but there are days, like when I look at this picture of Kaila to the left, that I just wish I could sleep for a whole day guilt free.

I guess I can. On a Saturday or Sunday. Maybe. Or call in sick. But it’s just not in my D.N.A. I like to be busy. I am, based on personality tests, an achiever. An introverted achiever, but an achiever nonetheless. What motivates me is pushing myself to get better. This often contradicts with my goal of enjoying the journey, but I even strive to achieve mastering the process (kind of contradictory, I guess). I always strive to get better. I like hearing what I’m bad at and actually have a hard time taking compliments. I enjoy being told that I can’t do something because then it pushes me that much harder to do it. I wish I knew what made me like this, like what childhood event pushed me to want to prove people wrong. Was it my sister who said that when I get into junior high, my grades will go down, and when they didn’t, well, they’d go down in high school? Who knows! But I can tell you that was motivation to get better grades. Maybe I’m onto something…

So I digress…the point of this is that one thing I really fail at that I just wish I could do better is find the time to maintain this blog. It seems minor, but with how much I’ve learned from what others share/write, I feel like I could really give back in that way. I wish that I could blog at least 3-4x a week. I see the production of people like Danica with the Chic Runner blog, Brandon with his Brandon’s Marathon (blog, show, and everything), my all-time favorite blog in the world, Ray at DC Rainmaker (who finds time to blog more than me amidst a 15 day trip to Asia!), and lately Pete’s Runblogger and his scientific methods, and I totally wish I could find or make time to do something similar.

I read so much about training and have learned so much from my friendly twitter, facebook and daily mile community that I feel like I want to give back to everyone by discussing what I learn.I’ve also been told that my work ethic and dedication have inspired several people to get out of their place and run, or bike, or swim when they weren’t feeling up to it. If I can have that impact sharing some quick tid bits on daily mile, then what else can I provoke in people?

But between the typical 8-5 (and it’s now become a bit more than 8-5 as my responsibility increases), work travel, the 12 hours of training, my girlfriend, my family, my friends, the puppy, the cats, and well, my own free time for my sanity, there’s not much time to document these videos, to put in the pictures I take, or to sit down and write out my thoughts and feelings from the workout I just implemented from a training plan I’m writing from scratch. I guess I look at the trade-offs and say, do I sacrifice the 30 minutes of sleep?  So far, that answer has been no.

And THAT’s the crazy thing. Because I’m training harder, I want to eat healthier, which means cooking more and picking up less crap for dinner. It means making lunches. It means trying to get a little bit more sleep when I can. It means trying to conserve energy so I can be present for conversation with my girlfriend and to be playful with my puppy when she needs to burn some energy! The lifestyle commitment I’ve chosen requires more time, and it’s just pulling time from other things.

Time is a valuable commodity. I like the fact that its a limited resource because it makes us choose what is important, and I think I’ve done that. I guess I wonder how others do it. How do they make time and provide a wealth of information for others to learn from? I am envious of those who do it, and do it well. Envy isn’t a good thing, so maybe that’s not the right word, but I do want to be like you (yeah, that’s envy )

How do you manage your time? How do you prioritize? Is it based on your values? Do you even think about this stuff? Please share – as usual, I’m willing to learn.