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.

Monday Braining

Last week, I had added all kinds of details into my Todoist lists about when I was going to do stuff and it caused me a lot of stress.

Since I add everything from walking the dog to answering an email to my to do list, I have a lot of items on a given day.

Normally, that’s not stressful since I know that the number on my list does not mean I have umpteen urgent items to do.

However, once I put those items on my calendar with a fixed time, I felt very stressed.

I had that sense of ‘too much to do’ overwhelm – even though it was the same number of things.

It was saying that I had to do this specific thing at this specific time that was causing the stress.

That’s kind of weird considering that assigning a time to a task usually brings me some relief. (Once a time is assigned, then I don’t have to keep asking myself subconsciously when I am going to do the thing.)

I think it was having so many ‘appointments’ on one day that felt so overwhelming.

And by putting them on the calendar, I lost the sense of flexibility that makes Todoist work for me.

So now I am trying to think in terms of time blocking, scheduling certain types of tasks for specific times and then doing them in whichever order makes sense to me in that timeframe.

Hopefully that will be less stressful.

Projects! That’s what I want.

I’m having one of those revelations that feels so familiar that I’m sure I have had it before and just didn’t carry it far enough.

With a lot of my writing and drawing, I have often said that I enjoy the creative practice but I don’t feel like it is going anywhere. I feel like it isn’t leading to anything.

I am already very creativity-oriented so I don’t need to add creativity for its own sake – I already have that baked into my life.

What I need is a way to help me focus and do something that has a plan, something with a defined end point. A reason to start and then to stop some specific aspects of my practices.

A way to see my skills develop.

A bit of a challenge.

I need to pick some damn projects, assign myself a time frame, and then make some cool stuff.

I may have had this revelation before but this incarnation feels really useful and tangible.

August Writing Goals

I have been doing lots of little bits of writing – blog posts, flash fiction, brainstorming – but I haven’t done any longer form writing in a while and I want to get back to it.

There’s nothing wrong with the writing I have been doing but it doesn’t require a lot of focus beyond the time I spend actually writing. Right now, though, I feel drawn to do something that needs planning, outlines, revision, something tangible that feels like I have said something I really wanted to say.

So, in August, I am going to be working on my novel and on a series of blog posts for my coaching blog.

Off to make some notes!