Who needs a new year to make a resolution or to start fresh? Who says it needs to be on January first or even your birthday? I am declaring today to be my “Start Fresh Day”. I had a doctor’s appointment today in which I was not given good news. I am the new owner of a body with high blood pressure… and not the “I can ignore it” high blood pressure. They kind where the doctor took me off of my birth control right then and there in the exam room and said she cannot write me another prescription. The kind where from the time where I came into the office my blood pressure jumped over 30 points on both ends. So, it is time for me to take care of me. It is time for a fresh start. It is time for me improve my life in all aspects. A happy me will equal a happy blood pressure reading (and drugs too… I’m sure the drugs will work).
I realize that a lot of my happiness comes from being creative. However a lot of my creativity leads to a gigantic, enormous, out of control mess. Yep… I am one pile away from being on Hoarders. So, I need to fess up to the fact that I need to get organized… something fierce! I want to be able to have a spur of the moment craft session and not feel like I couldn’t have people over for a month afterward. Where are Niecy Nash and Clean House when you need them? Except without the camera crew… I do not need to air my dirty laundry all over TV Land… even if there are piles and piles of dirty laundry that needs to be done.
Ok… here is my plan. I am going to dig out my old tried and true day planner and actually USE it. I am the very addicted owner of a super smart-phone and have access to many computers and electronics, but I think times like these make me want to resort back to the good old days of paper and pen. I don’t want to worry about remembering to sync something or charge something. I want to see, in my own scribbled writing, what I have going on and what I need to do. This means lists. I am a big list maker, but not a list follower. I have never gotten any satisfaction from crossing something off a list. I will spend hours upon hours making lists, even adding pretty colors, check boxes, and pictures… but I never use them. The satisfaction I get is simply in making the list itself. That has to be some kind of disorder?!?! So… I need to curb my urge to make visually beautiful lists and just go for the simple, write it down and cross it off approach. I do think that my past lists have intimidated me more than encouraged me and I wonder if I concentrate on only a few key points in my list if that will help. Instead of breaking every task down into sub tasks with defining categories and time limits (yes, that’s how I usually make lists), maybe I can find a kinder approach. No wonder I never follow them, I even think I’m nuts by the time I’m done making them.
So… how should I break down my lists? I want to include things that I want to do and not only the things that I need to do. Maybe I will start with itty bitty baby steps. I want to have categories such as Health, Home, Work, Creativity, Relationships, and maybe a category for those things that can’t be avoided like death and taxes… let’s hope I’m not crossing off death anytime soon. As I am envisioning this in my head, I am thinking these may be more like opposite lists, than list lists. Instead of making the list of things I should do, I may take the approach of writing down the things I do after I have done them... a way of encouraging myself instead of discouraging myself. For an example:
Tuesday, July 24th, 2012
Health
Doctor’s Appt
Grocery Shopping
Home
Laundry
Mopped Kitchen Floor
Work
Finished NOI Calculations
Updated VOE Spreadsheet
Creativity
Planned Selah’s Birthday
Blog Post
Relationships
Visited with Kendra
Death & Taxes
Made New Doctor’s Appt
This way I can look back on a day and be proud of what I accomplished instead of dreading what I didn’t get done. And it will give me the simple goal of doing at least one thing a day for each category. I think that as long as I keep a calendar of when certain things are due, I should benefit from this method. Plus I think it will help me reach certain creativity goals like blogging more and sharing the projects that I have actually completed from Pinterest. Heck, I may even be able to get my Etsy store stocked up if I take the time to be creative at least once a day.
Here I go… a fresh start. Me and my day planner are going to conquer the world (at least my little part of it).
