Lists

Lists are good for a great many things. Crossing things off that list, however, requires actual work.

Every now and then it is a good idea to make a list of things you want to accomplish. Some people make lists for their life goals, summer vacations, places to see, etc. I make grocery lists. I make To Do Lists. Let’s face it, I make boring lists. It is a rare day that I make a list that will be used for fun and adventure. Perhaps I should attempt to make one. Perhaps I should try to see what will happen if I actually plan on doing something. Perhaps I should just finish up one of the oh, so many projects I’ve started without completing. Or maybe I just need to make a list of stuff I want to do over the next couple days since I have them off.

Books

I love reading books and I love writing books. I do not love that I haven’t done either in quite some time.

Ever since I was a child I had a fascination with books that made me want to become an author (and author/illustrator for children’s books) when I grew up. Sadly I’ve been quite grown for awhile now, but my dreams for world domination in five or so book categories has yet to materialize. Should I simply give up at my ripened age? Or should I persevere that much more to attain the goals I set when I was a poor fat kid now that I am an even poorer skinny man?

Of course, this would mean becoming even more of a recluse than I was in middle and high school, spending nearly all of my free time writing stories and illustrating pictures for the ones meant for children, right? I’m not so sure I’m ready to make that kind of commitment, but at the same time, I’m not ready to simply give up on my dreams. Something has got to change, and that something is within my grasp.

Productivity

Saying I’m going to be productive is the same as saying there is only a ten percent chance of rain here in the Northwest. It’s going to be jinxed.

Having goals is one thing, but stating, “This is what I’m going to accomplish today!” is another. When I have a goal, I usually have a goal date or time to complete it by and am usually pretty generous. Of course, I usually procrastinate until the last minute before starting the project and it turns into a horrendous nightmare and I vow never to make another cake for as long as I live! Okay, so perhaps I can be a little overdramatic when it comes to things like cake.

I’m hoping, however, that today will at least be productive. By that, I mean I have plans to clean the house, go grocery shopping, and work on a few sewing projects. Maybe I’ll throw in a load of laundry or two. If not, oh well. I tried. Okay, so knowing me I will end up not cleaning the house, watching a couple movies then throwing a load in the washer and trying to figure out a last minute meal for dinner.

Not So Productive

Okay, so yesterday I had some pretty grand plans. I obviously didn’t accomplish them all.

Let’s face it, whenever I make a plan to do a massive amount of stuff, it always fails. Maybe that is a little dramatic. There have been a few instances where the plan has panned out, but rare are those cases. I did, however, manage to finish a few things. Alas, not much more. Overthinking on my part is usually the culprit, and yes, I know that overthinking is not a real word.

So what did I do with my day off? Worked a little more on a fabric line I’m planning on putting up on Spoonflower (www.spoonflower.com), finished the Frog & Fairy Quilt with an appliquéd name and date on another scene from the Frog & Fairy line, fed and watered the chickens as well as gathered eggs for the first time in months, played with the dog, then I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. All in all, about as unproductive as I get on my day off. I did manage to film another episode of the My Day Off YouTube series, but that probably won’t be up until Sunday.

I was hoping to start either That 70s Quilt with the In The Kitchen line from Alexander Henry or start working on flying geese for a quilt I want to make using Kate Spain’s Central Park or at least get another block from The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt done, but my brain was so out of it yesterday I’m surprised I got anything done at all. Judging from what I just wrote, my coherency is still a little iffy. I need this coffee to kick in pronto!

Picture Lacking

Lately I’ve been slacking off in the picture taking of events as well as the every day. I need to change that.

It was apparent last night that I wasn’t in the picture taking mood when I looked at the camera on a side table in the living room while we had friends over for a small Christmas party, mostly of my husband’s teaching cohort, and I decided not to take pictures but instead just enjoy the company. I’m kicking myself for not picking up the damn camera and snapping a few shots at least.

I believe part of the problem is that we haven’t had pictures printed in five years, and with no physical photo album to casually glance through my mind must simply think there aren’t pictures to be viewed. I need to get this mentality out of my head and get back to recording these memories again and not just when I get a few complaints suggestions that my blog is lacking in pictures.

So perhaps this should be my goal for 2012. Of course, I’m debating over whether to continue writing a daily blog about random happenstances and the occasional what I’m up to in the craft world come next year. At the same time, however, it has become so engrained in my morning routine that I don’t know if I’d even want to. Maybe a day of the week devoted to pictures? Maybe I should focus on goals and track my progress through photos? Maybe I should drink more coffee and enjoy another cinnamon roll my husband decided to make (from scratch, mind you) yesterday. Alas, I suppose I’ll find out just how ambitious my plans are for next year, uh, next year. In the mean time I’ll leave you with the remnants of last night’s party…

This Week's List

Today I am making a list of things I want to complete before week’s end. Tomorrow I will probably regret it.

With so much to prepare for the coming change in weather, and today probably going to be the last warm day to do most of it, my goal is to accomplish as much outdoor stuff today as I can. So with that, I am going to attempt at making a list of all things I want to get done over the coming week as well. Don’t worry, I’m scheduling in some me time too. After all, if your list is full of work, who would want to do it?

First on that list is cleaning up the backyard. This includes hosing off the deck, cleaning and storing the seat cushions on the patio furniture, emptying the spent flowers from the containers (the dahlias and cosmos are staying as they’ll bloom until December), cleaning out the old dog kennel we used to transport the chickens from the old house to here back in May, and general picking up of stuff we randomly have along the back of the house.

Second is to clean out the garden boxes. While technically this could be included in the backyard cleanup portion, it really does need to be a separate spot on the list for various reasons. My plan is to move them around and stack two of them together to form a deeper planting box. I figure since we only used two this year anyway, having three will work out fine. But this also means harvesting everything that is harvestable and tossing the rest over the fence. Literally.

Third down is cleaning out the chicken coop. Why do this after cleaning out the garden boxes? So that I can use their chicken poop covered bedding in the boxes and let the girls dig it all in for me. This worked out well last year, though I must admit I was a little sad I wasn’t able to reap the rewards since we had to move before planting season.

Fourth: Start cutting the Jelly Roll I’m using for the Fall Quilt.

Fifth: Sprinkle carpet powder on the furniture and living room carpet.

Sixth: Bathe the dog.

Seventh: Vacuum the entire house.

Eighth: Clean the bathrooms.

Ninth: Start piecing together blocks for the Fall Quilt.

It appears my list might be a little ambitious for someone like me who, well, isn’t so much. However, I know that if I can squeeze grocery shopping in after getting off work this morning before heading home I should be able to manage a majority of it before I go back to work on Thursday. Of course, this also is assuming I don’t skip down to the fourth item on my list then skip again to the ninth.

Experience

As a kid I thought I’d be the best author and illustrator the world had ever seen. As an adult I see the value of life experiences developing both.

Lately I’ve been toying with getting back into writing and illustrating children’s books. I don’t know if it is because I’ve given away a few of the ones I did when I was a kid lately for baby showers and Christmas presents after having a small batch printed or because we acquired a couple of part time kids ourselves, but the bug has bitten. I think I’m ready again, and it is a weird feeling because I haven’t been ready in a long time. Of course that means it is just another hobby to cut into my growing list, but if anything, I’m at my most creative when I’ve got multiple projects to work on. Then again, I’m at my least creative when I’m overwhelmed, so I also need to figure out a way to keep everything in check.

My parents, all four of them, encouraged me to explore my creative side, which is probably why I have so many different interests now as an adult. It’s funny how as a kid where you think life will take you and how once you get closer and closer to adulthood reality has other plans. I’m sure that if I were another person with ambition and focus I could have taken those childhood dreams and made them reality, but that just isn’t me. Setting goals and sticking to them is only a recent addition to my psyche and it is taking time to develop. That requires patience, something I had an abundance of in my younger years that I sorely lack now.

So in between quilting, developing a new line for my Etsy shop and figuring out how to continue my cake business while working (and updating my website while I’m at it), I plan on working on a new children’s book as well as finish the illustrations for one I revamped seven years ago. It has been seven years since my muse passed away and time for me to move on and find my inner muse instead. I miss my Grandma S. terribly, but her memory shouldn’t stop me from fulfilling my dreams and in fact should have just the opposite effect. And so, with that, I’m adding another goal to my list and hopefully another checkmark on it soon.

Risks

I’m not much of a risk taker. Go ahead, ask anyone.

When given the choice between certainty and the possibility of fulfilling a dream or a passion, I will nearly always gravitate towards certainty. Why? I’ve never been one to risk falling flat on my ass if my dreams fail. Has this approach ever actually worked? Nope. So if certainty isn’t all that certain, what is the real risk of trying to attain a goal that just might make me happy in the long run?

So, I’m not saying that I’ve never taken a risk, but let’s just say my approach towards said passions is usually half-assed as well. When I lost my job because I asked if the company I worked for was being bought out by another company back in nineteen-ninety-nine, I figured what the hell, I’d try my hand at being a web designer. My naivety of the world of web designing, and the fact that I never had any formal training, and that HTML was almost completely foreign to me (though, admittedly, I do know some source codes) should have been a huge warning sign that this wasn’t going to work. Alas, I tried anyway. I failed to even get started and ended up working at The-Store-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named for the next nine years. Again, choosing certainty over self-fulfillment.

The older I get, the less tolerance I have for simply allowing myself to fall into familiar patterns. However, I must admit that having a job in this economy is worth far more to me at this moment than pursuing a dream or two. Perhaps a balance is required where I can find the time to do both. My husband asked me the other day why I never write anymore, and I had to be honest, it’s this blog. My original goal was to write every day for a year to prove to myself that I could do it first, but also to try and stimulate my creative side and work on a novel or children’s book or something, anything. However, while he believes this blog has been a hindrance to that, I’m thinking that I have been the actual roadblock. I mean, I only spend about fifteen to twenty minutes a day writing a blog entry, usually first thing in the morning while drinking my coffee, which, even after work, leaves me with plenty of time to work on other projects.

Lately I’ve been taking a hard look at how I spend my time and if it is worth it to be a mindless zombie or to force myself to work on doing something creative every day. I think that if I really wanted to, I could do this. After all, even though some of the blogs I’ve written are, well, complete crap, I still wrote them for a small amount of self-fulfillment to prove that I could make a goal and stick to it. So perhaps instead of taking a risk, or thinking that I’d be risking my job at the sake of creativity, I need to simply make the time to do something about what little sanity I have left and use some of my God-given talents before they whither away.

Goals

Sometimes setting goals for yourself is a good thing. At other times, however, it can set you up for failure.

Unless you are a goal oriented person, setting a goal for yourself isn’t going to do much good. I mean, not all of us are wired to be the best at something or win every game or become powerful, rich or successful. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be the best person we can be. For instance, I’m not particularly brilliant in any one area but I am pretty damn good at a lot of things, and I’m okay with that. Well, not completely okay with that.

If there was a way to actually make money doing something that I love to do that would be great, but I’m a horrible business person. A fair amount of the cakes I’ve done for people I have either lost money or barely broke even because of undercharging or having to take time off work to actually have the time to make the cake. This would be considered a failure by anyone’s standards.

But even a non-goal oriented person can benefit from setting goals, they just need to take a realistic approach to it. I don’t mean setting a goal that you are going to poop that day or anything mundane like that to make yourself feel like you accomplished something during the day and give yourself a sticker on a kiddie chart, but an actual achievable goal. Although, I guarantee that if I set that poop goal, I’d be constipated. No, I mean small goals that can be done and won’t take a whole lot of time. While I know the weather is supposed to be gorgeous again today, I still plan on setting a goal of finishing one quilt block. Then, maybe, I’ll go outside and attend to the chickens and the garden and the weeds and…

Ambition

Some people are driven to be independent and others codependent. Sadly I am the latter.

Anyone who knows me knows that, well, I’m not all that ambitious. Hell, the most ambitious thing I’ve done was start this blog! I mean, I have ideas and dreams of what I’d like in life, but as far as putting my life in track to accomplish said goals, I just don’t seem to have the drive. A part of it is overthinking the big picture and becoming overwhelmed with all of the possible ways I could fail at any given endeavor. I’m quirky like that. But it all boils down to one thing… fear.

As a child, I tried to fit in as best as I could, hiding parts about me that I knew would cause some people to shudder. That trend went all the way through school, even though my senior year of high school I did start to loosen up somewhat, but not much. After much teasing from classmates about my hearing aids I stopped wearing them. Oh, sure, I’d put them on before leaving the house for school, but middle school was dreadful if you were even the slightest bit different. Okay, so it wasn’t that bad, as going to an inner city school had the advantages of incredible diversity, but it was fear of what might happen if I was teased even one more time for not being able to hear as well as everyone else. That and having a bladder problem. I don’t know how many times I peed my pants in class because I had to wait until a certain time to go. Fortunately a doctor’s note took care of that issue, but it wasn’t until middle school that was put into place and by then I was better able to control myself. That and knowing that I could just get up and walk out of the classroom without permission at anytime if I had to go eased the pressure of trying to hold it in. It still didn’t stop me from carrying an extra pair of underwear and sometimes pants in my backpack just in case.

The contradictory thing about me is that I have all these fears about not wanting people to think I am a failure with no ambitions in life, and yet I create self-imposed barriers that keep me trapped in circumstances that reflect just that. I don’t know if I can be successful at doing something I love for a living, but I have these silly fears of not even wanting to take the risk and try. So instead of taking the plunge into the unknown I stick with the familiar routine of relying on others.

I’m comfortable in the fact that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but after having a long conversation last night with my partner I am not comfortable simply living life by just barely surviving for the sake of survival. I’m not comfortable knowing that even the smallest financial setback at this point would be disastrous. The only comfort I can take is that my partner will find a job. He worked incredibly hard to become a teacher and just because school districts aren’t hiring right now, eventually they will have to. He set a goal and stuck to it, now it is my turn to make a goal and do what I have to do to see that goal through to fruition. I may not be that ambitious, but if I can stop freaking out about the minutia within the big picture and focus on one step at a time, I know I can accomplish anything I set my mind out to do.

King of Procrastination

Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? That motto is all too relevant in my life.

This isn’t some revelation or anything but just a fact… I am a procrastinator. I know it, and so does practically everyone who knows me. However, with some pertinent stuff that has been needing to get done I’m beginning to think that my Save-It-for-Later ways are starting to catch up with me. Ugh. I guess that means I need to get to work.

I offered to be in charge of getting our church’s directory in order, updating addresses and phone numbers and email addresses and such and preparing everything to send off. Alas, I’ve had the packet for two months and while a majority of it is finished, I still haven’t gotten it all done. And it didn’t help that I misread the submission rules and made the whole thing way harder for myself, which, honestly, isn’t much of a shocker either.

My list of stuff keeps growing, and a majority of it from church committees. Postcard and poster files need to be sent to the printer for printing them mailed off; minutes need to be typed and sent not for the previous Christian Education meeting but the one before, assuming I can find my notebook I took the minutes in; updates need to be given for our Capital Campaign with new totals on the poster I made to show our progress; I need to put together a planning committee for the Spring Auction so that we actually have one; and I suppose I should start making the crowns for a little girl’s birthday cupcakes and, oh, I don’t know, figure out what I’m doing for her mini cake too.

Huh, so my goals for the week look a little grim, but I’m sure I can whittle down the list at least by half before the week is over. And if not, nobody will be at all surprised.

When I Grow Up...

Last night my partner and I were discussing life goals we have. Sadly, I think I’ve given up on most of mine.

You know when you were a kid and a parent or teacher asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up and your response was either a doctor or fireman or whatever respectable career choice. My response was an artist… or a writer, or a painter, or a cartoon animator, or a movie director, or an actor, or a puppeteer, or… Even from a young age I couldn’t make a decision about what I wanted to be, and now at 33 years old I’m no better off.

As a creative-type, I find it difficult to box myself into one career category because I have too many passions. If, say, I only had one or two that would be different as I could probably integrate them or go from one to the other, something the wide-spectrum of creative arts doesn’t necessarily allow for. Also, my lack of education seems to be a stumbling block. Sometimes I wished I had saved up a little more money before moving out of my parent’s house and in with my partner so I at least could’ve finished up my Associates Degree, because, even as a generic degree, it would have been a stepping stone into a better paying job and higher education which, even if it didn’t propel me toward a career I wanted would land me a well-paying job that I’d be able to explore some of those options without worrying about finances. However, that is the past and I must think about the future, and the future is telling me to go back to school.

I still don’t exactly know what I want to be when I grow up, even as other people seem to think they do. I mean, just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean that is what I want to do with the rest of my life, but at the same time barely scraping by at a job that pays just above minimum wage isn’t exactly a dream either. During the past couple years I squandered any opportunities to explore any creative outlets I may have been able to do in exchange for the security of an unemployment check. That isn’t to say that I didn’t apply to positions that would’ve allowed me to utilize my talents, because I did, but without the education or work history in those fields it’s damn near impossible to even land an interview. Sometimes I wish I had my own DeLorean Time Machine to go back into the past and kick my younger self in the ass.