Day: January 2, 2010

I’ve read, and observed in my own life, that the interest in sewing skips a generation. My grandmother was an excellent seamstress. My mother tried, but I can still picture her exhaling sharply as she set out to rip another mis-sewn seam. She once made me a pair of pants for Christmas. Suspecting that something wasn’t right, we agreed that I would wear a blindfold and try them on. She laughed when they didn’t fit, and I took off my blindfold and laughed too.

My sewing talents don’t approach my grandmothers, and I’m in a “not sewing” holding pattern, but my homemaking gene is strong.

Similarly, my resolutions seem to go in an every-other-year success rate. In 2008, I resolved to write a letter per day and before burning out completely in late November, pretty much kept to that. Last year, I pledged to stop eating while standing. On the surface, a much easier task to fulfill, but I failed miserably at it.

With the every other year success rate, this year looks good for resolutions. At the New Year’s Eve party I attended last night my resolution was greeted with raspberries, general jeers and calls of “boring!” But I’m pretty excited about it.

Resolved: in 2010, I will spend 15 minutes per day working at my desk. In priority order my tasks will be: checkbooks, in box, blogs.

All three of those things are not really in my control. My checkbooks/money management system is admittedly a labyrinth process that could perhaps be streamlined. But I like the way I have set up its many processes, and checks and balances. When it is caught up, it gives me a sense of security.

It is rarely caught up. When I attack the to-do list monthly, it takes two or three hours and causes much shallow breathing and sighing. I also have a vague sense of unease throughout the month that I could bounce a check at any time. When I neglect the money management for more than a couple months, it takes the better part of a day to dig myself out. After the move, I didn’t catch things up for about six months and spent eight hours setting things right. A bit of daily attention would prevent this, and the resolution is designed to do just that.

My inbox is a sorry mess. I caught a reference to it in a previous blog post mentioning something about it’s geologic layers. I think I had it down to one object a few Christmases ago, but that was it. I would love to clear out that sucker, and now that my checkbooks are caught up, and presumably easy to maintain, I aim to do just that.
And oh, the blogs. In my mind, I work on them all the time. One of my friends lists my blog on her site. The listing also notes the last posting. I remember the first time I saw that my last posting on the list was three or four months old. I was surprised, then realized that just because I think about the blog daily, doesn’t mean that things are published. The thing I didn’t realize is that there are so many steps. Taking pictures, prepping pictures, making the blog post, writing it, letting it rest, editing it, editing it again, actually posting it. And I have so many damn interests. All those steps just don’t get done very often. It’s disheartening.

I don’t expect the blogs to get much better any time soon, for right now the money and the inbox promise to eat up that fifteen minutes. But perhaps the blog will move along a bit.

As for implementation, I have printed up calendars for the year and posted them on the door to the office. Each day I do my fifteen minutes, I will make a check mark of some kind on the day. I plan to prioritize this task and do it as soon as I come home from work, or first thing in the morning on non-work days.

Wish me luck.