Today’s muse: a barred eagle owl

There’s so much time in a day, Alison.

You could have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on 3 different continents.

You could outline the book you’re going to write, start the screenplay adaptation, and watch “Gone With The Wind,” before the sun even sets.

Spend a day at work, and still have 16 hours left over.

Or you could just think 60,000 different thoughts as you tool all over Houston.

Hey, the record for climbing Mt. Everest is under 9 hours, leaving 15 to nap and go Yeti searching. There’s so much time in a day, Alison. So much.

There might even be enough to get this book done by deadline! One of the productivity tricks I use is the Chrome browser extension Stay Focused. I have it set to allow a total of 30 minutes out of every 24 hours between Facebook and Twitter. I figure that’s plenty of time to respond to mentions and tags, and do what posting I have been cheating to do. It’s funny how it feels like I waste so much time on those two sites, but this app is proving very useful. I can also set it to a Nuclear Option where it will block everything except my allowed sites. All I allow when I do this is Dictionary.com and it’s related tabs.

Sometimes I’ll add YouTube or Gmail, if I’m expecting something from an editor or agent, or if I want to listen to some music videos while writing. The problem is that my Windows 8 laptop also has IE installed, so when I’m blocking Chrome, I still have access to the web. Then again, I also have my phone, and a second laptop, and a Surface, and my desktop machine, and my Kindle Fire…not to mention the husband’s desktop machine, and laptop, and iPad. Honestly, I’m just doomed. Thankfully, all those other options require me getting up from where I’m working, usually on the couch, and the very act reminds me why I’m blocking the web in the first place, so I stay put and work!

Word count at the end of the day: 69390

Online shopping: I looked. I resisted.

Social media: ::hangs head in shame::