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Today I am going to take a break from the normal training to reaffirm my Why for doing all of this, the thing that drives me to move forward when I am feeling under the weather or depressed over the world. For me, the Why is time freedom, the ability to do what I want, when I want without the worry or fear of losing my livelihood or not being able to pay the constant stream of bills that seems to be a part of our modern lives.

To understand why the time freedom is important to me, a little background would help. When I first started college, I found myself a job working the graveyard shift at a hotel.  I worked this job for 8 hours from 11pm to 7am Monday through Thursday nights. This sounds like a somewhat normal job, but the timing and the scope of the job made it feel like much less. Each night I would get to the hotel and work actively for 1 to 2 hours before I had finished what was needed for the night. I would then have the rest of the time at night to do my own thing until 6am. So out of those 8 hours that I worked, 5 of them were my own time to study, or write, or just watch TV, but it was MY time to do what I decided. Yes, I had to be there and be responsible in case a guest needed anything, but that was a minor in the face of the freedom I had.

That job gave me the time freedom during the nights, but it also created time freedom on the weekends too. I would get home Friday morning and stay up all day Friday. I would start my weekend out a day before any of the day workers would. I would then have all day Saturday and all day Sunday off as well to be with family and friends while they had that normal weekend. Then the best part came into play … I didn’t have to be back at work till 11pm on Monday night. I, in essence, worked 4 nights and week and had 4 days off every weekend. I can‘t tell you how much joy that schedule gave me, a joy that I wouldn’t really realize until I started into the “normal” working world, trading that schedule for working 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday and only getting 2 days off each week.

I am not sure if the schedule I lived turned me into a night person, or if I was already a night person and the schedule just completed that, but I found that the nights were so peaceful and nice. It was a calmer and more in tune time to be alive then I have found since moving to a daytime schedule. There is a peace to the night for me that does not exist during the day and that schedule allowed me to live that peace and still be alive and active during the days when the rest of the world was at their leisure on the weekends. It was the best of both the night and day time worlds.

The schedule that our culture forces on us if we want to exist within it is the reason that I work so hard on my dreams. It tears out me every Sunday evening when I have to go to bed early so that I can get up to go to work, and every morning that the alarm goes off and forces me into a wakeful and abrasive world. I long for that peace and tranquility that working the nights gave me. Every morning that the alarm goes off, it reminds me of my Why and strengthens my resolve to keep moving forward.

What is your why and how to you let it strengthen your world?