Schedules and Choices

One of the discoveries I'm making as someone living outside the confines of a 9 to 5 job is that there is no "right" way to organize one's time or energies. I have been waiting over the last three months for my private interests and work to organize itself to look like my "regular" schedule. And its slowly beginning to dawn on me that I never have to go back to that "regular" schedule if life allows it. I can allow myself to grow into a schedule that flows with my internal desires and impulses.
Today I made bread. It might be the one concrete accomplishment of the day. I will also tutor two children, a task I find immensely satisfying. I had hoped to combine my bread making with some writing, but a friend called and so I cleaned while talking with her instead. But I really liked the rhythm of making bread and think it could be a wonderful activity to combine with writing. The exercise of kneading is invigorating; there are set blocks of 1-2 hours where I can write; the tactile work of touching sticky dough is inherently satisfying; and I feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the day. Perhaps I will make this a Friday routine. Or perhaps I'll be in the mood for something very different next Friday.
The struggle between choosing to lock myself into routines (routines that will do me good I tell myself) versus allowing myself to follow my instincts has been a difficult one. Often the decision about what I need to do in a particular day overwhelms me, and I retreat to watching television. Television tells me exactly what to do--sit back and become involved in somebody else's life drama, watch them struggle with the questions. But as time goes on, and I feel less anxiety about my life not conforming to some outside definition of "productive" or "normal," I begin to have more energy to do work that I genuinely desire to do. And I begin to believe that if I listen hard enough, my heart and intuition will lead me to work that I am meant to do in the world.