This will be a lost week

I continue to be amazed that even though I am self-employed, and, one would presume, in charge of my schedule, it never seems to happen that way.

My wife and I talked, and agreed that rather than change from a daytime, church-friendly, schedule to a nighttime, poker-friendly, schedule every two weeks, I will switch once a month.  The plan was that I would go to church the rest of April, starting April 10, then switch back to the poker-friendly schedule in May.  I didn't switch for the first Sunday in April, because my wife had to work and so couldn't go to church anyway.

The reason for switching less often is that I am a natural night person.  I have had a lot of jobs where I worked second or third shift (third is my preference).  When I get up around noon, a pretty standard schedule for a poker player, my body likes that schedule, a lot.  I naturally fall into that schedule in a day or two.

But when I go the other way, switching away from the night schedule, it's a real fight to get my body to go along.  If I don't do it gradually, over the course of a week or so, there are going to be at least a couple days when I'm too tired to play poker intelligently, or even to study anything and have it make sense.

I'm in the middle of that process now, and I can already see that it's not going to be a week where don't get a lot of time in.  Sunday was already a mess.  We had thunderstorms that I didn't expect on Sunday, and I had to bail out two hours into an MTT, rather than risk losing the computer.

My sleep was irregular last week, and even with gradually adjusting my schedule over the rest of this week, I'm going to be tired more than normal at least part of that time.  And our grandchildren will be here for a few hours on Saturday, so this week is pretty much blown up.

There is also another problem.  I just realized that I can't switch back to the poker-friendly schedule in May.  I am on call for jury duty May 9-13, so I have to be available during the day for at least that week, more if I am assigned to a trial that goes into the following week.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to seeing my grandchildren, and I don't really begrudge spending that time.  But it's frustrating that no matter how hard I try to get control of my schedule, I can't seem to make that happen.  I consider myself outstanding at problem-solving, and at thinking outside the box.  But so far, I haven't been able to solve something as simple as keeping a schedule that works for me.