So, today is my first day in the Stepcase Lifehack Become an Early Riser In Five Days Challenge.

I saw the challenge in my RSS feeds when he first posted it on Saturday but waited until Sunday night to commit to it. One of the reasons I waited was that I was fighting with myself over time. I have a habit of taking a thing that looks like a good thing and doing it to extremes contributing to my own failure at times. I've been working a great deal lately on fighting that tendency. So, when I got all excited about this lifehack and thought I'd get up at 5am every day, I then took a day and a half to check myself and decided that 6am was more realistic. Zig Zigglar says to make your goals realistic and attainable, and incremental. If I want 5am, I can do 6 for a while first.

Now, do you realize that getting up at 6am instead of 8am every day for 5 days gives me an extra 10 hours a week? How crazy is that? After my affirmation this morning (day 9 of 21 yay!) I took a long thoughtful shower to contemplate my 10 extra hours this week. At first I started listing through all the business stuff I could accomplish that really just needs to get done (I hate that word "need").

Then I thought about The Karate Kid. Since there is a sequel coming out shortly I wanted short stuff to see the original so we watched it this weekend. So, while I was in the shower thinking of all the business related things I could finish during my extra 10 hours I instead remembered Mr Miagi's voice saying "You remember lesson about balance? Lesson not only about Karate, lesson about whole life" and I thought "This 10 hours is me time for creating my balance".

That being said, this is my commitment to you (and I expect you to hold me to it). I will spend these 10 hours finding balance. Here is my plan for the week. I plan to do an activity and a blog each day this week.

Monday (Today):

Blog (this one) about 5 day Challenge and Balance.

Activity: Begin Bedroom management.

footnote: My bedroom is a mess, and when your day starts every day surrounded in mess then your mind is a mess all day. I plan to rectify that situation this week. Today will be laundry and straighting some stuff that is being stored there.

Tues:

Blog about Affirmations and Questions because I've gotten several questions about these.

Activity: Finish room straightening (yes, it will take two days).

Wed:

Blog about Mentors (I've been meaning to write this one for a while).

Activity: Build 3 sets of shelves in my bedroom for the random stuff that has been organized in neat piles and start populating the shelves.

Thurs:

Blog open blog question... Are you a friend of mine (or just a reader) and wonder why I have one of the weird habits that I have. Most of my habits are deliberate. Ask me in comments here and I may use it for my Thursday blog.

Activity Build my bed... yes, that's right, my matress and box springs have been on the floor ever since I left the friar lane house (never even built the bed at the last house) so I'm going to build out the frame and put the bed on it.

Friday:

Activity (swoosh, did you catch that reversal?) I'm going to the gym. It has been over a year since the last time I went to the gym, 8 months since the dojo, and near 6 months since fest, nothing is keeping me in shape these days. But, I realized today, that getting up at 6 gives me time to get to the gym, workout, dress for the day there, and come home in time to get short stuff to school.

Blog You get to hear me whine about how much it hurts to work out again.

There, that is my commitment to you guys, and well, to my self, but I'm counting on you guys to keep me accountable.

Lets do this thing!