February? Ok, sure.

I’ve been seeing a lot of jokes on Facebook lately about how long January felt. I don’t usually find January that long. It’s February that gets me.

But I’m determined that that’s not going to be the case this year.

Usually, I find it February somehow takes forever and I end up dumped into barge without feeling like I did anything during the month before.

January actually felt pretty good. I had just a few specific projects to do – which always helps. The timing of those projects was dictated by somebody else but I was glad that I recognized that the scale and scope of those projects meant that I wouldn’t be able to take on anything else.

I need to practice that a bit more for myself, I think.

There’s no reason why I can’t choose my number of projects, choose their scope, and choose their timing.

I just need to convince my ADHD brain that those decisions makes sense.

Let’s see how that goes.

New Year’s Eve

I love treating NYE as a mostly regular night.

It feels like mixing the magical and the mundane to be journaling and drawing while people set off fireworks.

I’m not usually a fan of the saying ‘start as you mean to go on’ because I don’t usually know how I want to go on but this time I am certain:

I plan to spend this year going easy on myself and doing things on my own terms.

That works for this evening and it works for 2025.

Me, at work.

My husband has been sick for the past few days so for the first two days of this work week, I have been opening his shop first thing in the morning for his staff.*

Having a fixed time to be ‘at work’ has made me realize that I need to get up earlier overall.

I have to leave at 8:15 to open his shop on time and I’ve been getting up at 7:30, which felt like plenty of time.

And maybe it is, on paper, but it doesn’t FEEL like enough time.

45 minutes is not enough time for my brain to wrap itself around feeding the dog, having my own breakfast, and getting ready for the day.

This is especially true for when I have to leave the house for part of the day but I think the same holds true for working at home.

I often wish I had gotten down to work earlier but I struggle to make the switch from ‘just waking up’ me to ‘I can work now’ me.

And if my morning goes a bit sideways, it can throw off my whole day.

So, if I want to have lots of time to do the things that are important to me, if I want to feel in charge of my schedule, I have to change when I get up.

And I probably need a plan for what I will do before work and ‘at work’, even if I am not actually leaving my house that day.

Now I guess I have to experiment with how much earlier I should set my alarm.

*His senior staff are working on a project at another location.

New Year Ritual

I lit a fire in my backyard, fire pit and burnt bits of paper with things I want to let go of written on them.

Will it help?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that it felt good and powerful and that is a good enough start for me.

A fire in a backyard fire pit
Image description: a square fire pit, surrounded by snow, the flames inside look warm and vibrant.

A weekend to reset

This is a long weekend and I have a family dinner to go to tomorrow but otherwise my weekend is pretty open.

I’m trying to figure out how to balance relaxation with doing some resetting around the house.

It’s always tricky for me to dig into any household project because once I start I just want to keep going and then I burn myself out on the task.

But I am tired of having so much stuff cluttering up parts of my house so I have to find a way to get started.

Perhaps if I consider this weekend a time to organize my project plan rather than a time to finish the projects?

Let’s see how that goes.