I have to put myself in jail.

Not real jail. Don't panic Mom.

Just a general comment about my MLK weekend. It was a freakin' three-kend, baby! (I give credit to my friend Mark Soloff for coining that term). I worked a lot this weekend. I had about eight hours of rehearsal, which isn't much, but coupled with a shift at metro, that's about fourteen hours of work on a weekend. Weekends are supposed to be for relaxing, right?

There isn't anything wrong with working on the weekends, though, and quite frankly it's unavoidable with my career and lifestyle choice. I don't dislike it. What I dislike is when I actually have time off at home, and I busybody around. I run errands, I clean, I arrange, I catch up on e-mails, I worry about what work I have to do outside of work so that I don't suck when I get to work. I have to put up a blog, I have to work on my lines, I have to crop my photos for the website, hey look a cat just vomited. I think I laid down for maybe twenty minutes before I shot right back out of bed and did a half-hour of yoga. If I wasn't doing yoga I'd call myself manic.

It's like I have to trick myself. I say, "Okay, I am going to do fifteen minutes of work. That's it!" because I know if I say fifteen minutes, I'll do about an hour. As opposed to saying, "I'll do an hour of work!" which invariably turns into three.

I have to put myself in jail. Do nothing for a half-hour. I'm in jail for a half-hour! At fifteen minutes I'll start fidgeting, but see, I can't feel guilty about being in jail, because I don't have the key to let myself out. I gave my key to an imaginary jailer, who stepped out for a strawberry milkshake, will be back in a bit, no problem. But me? Jail. JAIL.

These are the games I play, all by myself. And because I like structure, I'm a stickler about the rules.