Author: Christine

Christine http://www.mombie.com I'm a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire. I'm the founder and Co-Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I'm the current president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival. I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.

On to-do lists and what gets done

So, I was trying to get all kinds of stuff done at the end of last week so I could start my vacation on Saturday.

I recognized that I couldn’t do all of the things but I was trying to get some stuff moving so the tasks could roll on while I was off.

But then I realized that I had committed to a few things over the weekend and, unless I wanted to put in an effort larger than the task itself, it was easier to just do them instead of passing them on to someone else.

And then there were a few tasks that were more tangly than I realized and took up more time. So that meant I couldn’t get even the most basic aspects of some important tasks done in time.

So I made a decision.

I will officially be on a full vacation as of Wednesday but previous to that I will pick one important thing to work on each day and when that thing is done, I am going to relax for the rest of the day.

If the task is in the middle of the day, I will relax before and after and just focus on the task while I am doing it – not letting it sleep out into other parts of my day.

Let’s see how this rolls.

Tiny Art Plans

I’m headed to an Art Crawl tomorrow. A friend and I will be hosting a table where people can make squiggle art – as in, we’ll create squiggles on index cards and people can use the squiggle as a prompt.

Here’s my sample:

Image description: a blue squiggle on a piece of paper has been turned into a drawing of a bird with a long neck, wearing a bow tie, and singing with its beak wide open. The lyrics next to the bird are from Nancy Sinatra’s song ‘These boots are made for walkin’

I like this tree

When I was walking the other day, this tree caught my eye and I just found it so interesting to look at.

As I am typing this, I’m realizing that there are multiple trees in the photo below- funny how the brain focuses on the thing you are talking about and blanks out the other stuff, hey?

I’m referring to the tall, sparse tree on the centre left of the photo.

Anyway, something about its bedraggled growth caught my attention and endeared this scraggly tree to me.

I felt so kindly toward it that I snapped a photo.

Yeah, brains are weird, mine may be especially so, but I like what I like.

A photo of a few trees on someone’s lawn, one of which is taller and more sparse than the others.
A photo taken from across a suburban street. There is a relatively tall tree at the centre left with green leaves that are both clumped and sparse and there are bits of branches sticking out here and there. There are other trees around it on the lawn of someone’s house and there are houses, cars and other typical suburban street stuff in the background.

I don’t have to get EVERYTHING done in the next two days

I’m taking a few days off next week so I am engaged in a brain battle right now.

My brain wants me to do ALL OF THE THINGS in the next two days so I can “really relax” when I’m off.

But that’s not how my work functions (it’s probably not how most people’s work functions, I assume.)

I will have to choose some key things to finish.

I will have to decide to leave some stuff for when I come back.

The trick is figuring out which stuff belongs in which category.

Note to self #875 (approximately)

A small sign that reads ‘own your time’
A photo of a note propped up under my monitor that says ‘Own Your Time’ – the all capital letters are in black ink on a white background and there is a sticker of moon phases under the text. The edge of the white card is trimmed in gold washi tape. Behind the card, in the background is a tiny gold-coloured robot toy with big eyes.