Still Looking for My Way

2012 was supposed to be the year that I got myself together.  I had plans - including a 101 in 1,001.  I worked accountability into it by making swaps that related to it.  I just knew that if I could start making habits, they'd become habits and I'd be on top of everything.

That lasted about 4 days. Four days until all my plans went *poof* out the window.  And I can't even say why it happened.  I don't remember anything catastrophic that day.  I just... forgot to do some of the things I wanted to do.  And then I forgot more things.  And more.  Until I got to a point where I didn't look at anything that I needed to do for over a month.  I slid behind in rating for swaps, and for getting them out.  I slid behind in doing book reviews and memes that I enjoy on my blogs.  I slid behind on housekeeping and healthy eating.

I have GOT to get back on top of things.  I want a house that I'm not embarrassed to let people come into.  I want to be able to cook dinner for my family.  I want to make a name for myself in both the Mommy Blogging and Book Blogging communities.  I want to have time when I don't have to worry about what's not getting done when I take time to do something I want to do.

Last night, I tried to work up a schedule for myself for today.  It didn't go well.  I think a large part of the problem is that I have too many things on my To Do list.  Even sitting here on the computer, I'm bouncing between three different things (rating swaps, entering for giveaways on Goodreads, and trying to write my blog post).  And while I'm doing those things, I'm thinking that I should be switching and folding laundry.  I should be cleaning the living room.  I should be checking today's tasks from FlyLady and MommaCan. I should figure out what I want to do for dinner tonight... and lunch for Pete and I.  I should I should I should...

I'm driving myself crazy with all of the things that I "should" be doing and trying really hard to push the "want" to be doing out of my mind.  And I think I figured out the problem.  Well, the two problems.

1) I work better when I have an audio book or some music playing.  Something about the silence makes it harder for me to keep my mind on one task.  It's like the auditory background helps guide my mind on it's path.  I haven't put anything on because I don't want to disturb whatever Pete's watching in the living room.  But I've got to change that.  It's time to bring back my audio books!

and

2) I don't have things written down.  I've always worked better actually writing what I needed to do.  It made it stick in my mind so I wouldn't get overwhelmed.  But even when I do write things down, they aren't in any particular order.  Instead, I just have a list of things that have to get done.  No order of importance.  No break down.  Just this huge list staring me in the face.  So I need to change that.  I'm thinking of downloading ToDo Task Manager to my Kindle in hopes of getting myself on track, but first and foremost, I think I need to write it down on paper.  My original plan for today was to get a bunch of computer work done - book reviews, ratings, reading my feeds.  But I think getting the groundwork set for what I want to do is much, much more important than getting things finished.  I only have a couple things that are actually due TODAY, so those can be slotted in later. I'm hoping that if I can get my system down, I can get my life back under control.

So that's my plan.  Working my way through my huge list of things that need to be done, prioritizing and setting things right.  And tomorrow... tomorrow I will start all over again.  Because that's what matters.  Getting up and starting again.

Destiny has a lot to do with it, but so do you. You have to persevere, you have to insist. - Andrea Bocelli

Brain Droppings - Thoughts, Memories and Things to Share from the Last Week

For the last week or so, I've been laid low with the sick.  I believe (though I never confirmed it) that I had the flu.  Fever, nausea, chills, all over body aches.... I felt like death, without even the benefit of being warmed over.  Rich stayed home Monday and Tuesday, but that was as much time as he could take off.  Wednesday, both boys were in school so I spent the time I should have been cleaning (and taking down the Christmas decorations) sleeping. Thursday, we were in for a snow and ice, so they closed Rich's department at 2 and he got to come home early.  Teddy was in school until 3, but things weren't too bad then.  I spent most of Thursday in bed as well.

Thankfully, yesterday I was feeling about 75% human.  Human enough that I could a) deal with both my kids (since they closed school because of ice - Nashville doesn't have the equipment to deal with a lot of ice on the roads) and b) get a bunch of things done around the house.  I was amazed at how much I got done in such a short amount of time.  It helped, I think, that I was listening to Home Improvement: The Undead Edition, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner.  Good books always help me stay focused on what I need to do.  I did end up hitting my physical wall before I wanted to, but I still feel good about what I did get done.

Being sick gave me a chance to play with my Kindle Fire a lot more.  I did do some reading (I'm rereading American Gods by Neil Gaiman right now), but mainly I used it as my conduit to the web.  I've been downloading a lot of apps for it - some games (like Angry Birds Free and 250+ Solitaire Collection), some essentials (like gReader (Google Reader | RSS) and MailDroid), some for productivity (like Cozi Family Organizer and Evernote) and a whole host of others.

Far and away, my favorite is Evernote.  Since I've been lying in bed most of the week, I've spent a lot of time reading my RSS feeds.  And since I like sharing goodies with my readers (which reminds me, I've listed all the book giveaways and goodies that I've found over the last week over on Views from the Reader Side - other goodies and giveaways to be listed here tomorrow.... probably), I wanted a way to keep track of the pages on which I'd found things to share.  I can't save things easily in my feed reader (well, I can, but I wanted something I could make personal notes with if necessary), so I went looking.  I wasn't sure about Evernote - I have a ton of "note" programs all over the place that I've only used in a limited capacity.  But I decided to give it a try.  I love the fact that I can have separate "notebooks" to put the notes in, that I can include audio and photo posts and that I can tag things under numerous tags.  It's an easy touch for me to get into the program from my feed reader on my Kindle and then an easy few more touches to drop it in the correct notebook, tag it and note it.  And since the information is kept in the cloud rather than on the device, it meant that I was able to pull it down to the desktop when I was ready to work on my Giveaways post last night.  Major plus.  The only thing I didn't like was the fact that I can't put notes into multiple notebooks with one click.  There are times, particularly with the book blogs that I read, that I want to share something with my readers and keep note of a book I want to read later.  I just need to get in the habit, I think, of saving it a second time to another notebook.

Apparently, Teddy has been bitten by the love bug.  There's a little girl in his class, Sonduce (not sure of the spelling) that Teddy has talked about occasionally as one of his best friends.  I asked him the night before last how things have been since he started back to school, who he's been playing with, etc.  He told me that when he and Sonduce went to their respective buses in the afternoon, they said good-bye to each other because "we love each other".  My eyebrows raised.  Not because he loved someone - since he was around 3, he had a crush on his friend Ruby.  But that... that was different.  This was a little girl I didn't know.  I asked him if she was his girlfriend and he blushed and said "Yes".    I can't help but tease him a little, though I know I shouldn't.  My mom still teases me about my first "boyfriend", Ramon Bennett.  I actually have a picture of our "wedding" in kindergarten.  It makes me wonder if the same will happen with Teddy.  Probably not, but it does make me smile.

I know I had more brain droppings to write about, but I can't think of them at the moment.  Well, that and the fact that I've got to get us ready to go to the library.  Busy day ahead!