Last I was here, I warned you I was about to get prolific. I lied. I've written about 689 words. Far from prolific. 

It's something, though, right? Doesn't that matter? 

No.

Why not?

When I edit, I am a ruthless, heartless, cruel person. My goal is to make the writers I edit better. According to a personality/career aptitude test, I think like a college professor. Which means that I intend to teach people to be better writers. 

Problem?

First, an editor's job is not to teach. Second, some people don't need to be taught. Third, of those that do, not all of them are ready to be taught. Fourth, some of them can't handle being taught. Fifth, some people believe that because they have a degree and I don't, I have nothing to teach them.

It's presumptuous and arrogant of me to believe I can teach anybody anything, since my extant completed lifetime output amounts to about forty-five pages.

Which brings me to my real purpose tonight. I want to talk about discipline. 

Somebody just cringed.

Discipline is not a bad word. It just has a bad reputation. Bad parents, bad spouses, bad significant others and crazy people in positions of authority have abused discipline for to make themselves feel better at somebody else's expense.

To bypass all the baggage, let's consider a piece of discipline not one of us would disagree we need. Potty training. Imagine your life without it. It's difficult to do. Being potty trained is something toddlers hate to learn. It's a behavioral ritual that is imposed upon each of us by someone else. I'd bet that there isn't one person reading this who isn't grateful to have endured that imposition. There are many who have helped pass on this imposition to their own children, siblings, or pets.

Until I heard otherwise, the best definition I could come up with for discipline was "How I choose to spend my time." 

This is why my piddly word count doesn't matter. It took me an hour to produce those words. How many hours have passed since my last blog post to now? Don't know. Don't want to know. The answer would depress and anger me.  I had a multitude of 'unassigned' hours that could have been spent adding to that number, or posting here. But they weren't.

Why? Some reasons are legitimate. Exercise. Doctor's visits. Eating. Sleeping. Socializing (to a point). Some, not so much. Who makes those decisions? Me. I like to pretend they're not, but they are decisions. Were they good or bad? Doesn't matter. If my goal is to be a writer, then I must spend some time writing. Hopefully, the more the better. 

I recently listened to a teaching by a man named Danny Silk, who is a pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California. It was entitled Becoming a Man. His definition of discipline is this: "Telling yourself what to do, and obeying yourself."

The question is, what are you telling yourself to do?