13,515 Is All in a Day's Work, I Tell Ya

No, that's not how many friends or followers I have ... not by any means. That's the total of unread emails in my personal email account. Unread, people, unread. There exists approximately 21,085 emails and as fast as I delete them, they continue to multiply. Like rabbits. All the time. As I write, I think I saw 3 more slide in. No, seriously. 

I have 35 alarms on my phone, and I need them all. Some tell me what time to get up and there are 3 of those because I'm no spring chicken and I need to be told more than once that "I SAID Get Up!" That's my ode to Big Brother (I am soooo excited that a new season is around the corner). You know, that annoying voice who gets to wreck havoc on the houseguests by shouting at them that it's "time to head to the backyard" to get to OTEV on the mountain top:

 

But first ... like I was saying, something kicked into gear not too long ago. I began to start doing things I knew I needed to do, but either put off, was too tired to do or simply forgot about. I have a ton of things on my many lists of things to do and, unfortunately, there are a lot of duplicates.

 

Lately, I've begun to tackle them. All of them. Some at the same time, and then I pull back and say, "Only do 3 at a time, what you can't do today, add to tomorrow's list," etc., and sometimes it works. I'm often really too tired, or the commute was horrific or I had a child that wanted to vent, so many things, that I get home and do absolutely nothing. I just don't get to anything and the guilt is real, and brutal, but sometimes I just can't do it.

Then I pray for another day, another time to "get it right" and I make sure I tell myself that I'm gonna Get 'er DUN. Might not happen, but I feel that if I don't say it, I might never do it:

I can relapse, but I cannot fall off the wagon completely.

Mixed metaphors aside, I'm starting to make a dent. It's small but steady. The planner I've been forgetting to write in might have a weekly review instead of every weekday—I don't even think of it, much less write in it, on the weekends—but as long as I'm consistently putting pen to paper and pluggin' away, I'm okay.

13,790 and 208

I am really bothered by that 8,
but that's how many there are: photos and videos.

I won't tell you how many balls, cakes and skeins of yarn I have, or knitting needles, or crochet hooks, or spools of thread, or macrame rope and twine, but it's a LOT. Enough so, that I've devoted an entire bedroom to be my studio and still don't have enough room for everything that would typically go in there. I'd show you Before photos of both rooms as I'm reorganizing, to compare with the After photos I plan to take later this year, but you'd be horrified, I'd have to kill you, and we can't have that, now can we?

My point is that I have to hold myself accountable and find a way to break into bite-sized, manageable pieces all of the things I need to do, so I can become the most efficient me I can be. I'm trying to do too much: always in all ways—à la Ryan Serhant—all the time, and there's gotta be a better way. My eldest son gave me and his siblings white boards two years ago, and of those goals I accomplished 1 in 7 (I think). The ink is still visible: I can read it, but so many things have brushed against it that board that the words are no longer fully written; however, their intent is etched in my brain and I know that I can do better than that.

 

Of course the list has 7 goals, because if you look up Over Achiever in the
dictionary, you'll see me wavin' back at cha.

When my package design teacher said we needed to produce 1 product for a given semester, I had 11 or 13. "You need 3? Let me give you 15." I've always been that way so that's why I never understood the phrase Less is More (see Blog Post #9, I think this one is #10, but who's counting?)

I always did more, always in all ways. I still have so many ideas of things I want to do, and research what I can or want to do every weekday, and because of that, I now have multiple folders, by day, of more stuff.

I'm doing EVERYTHING BUT doing the stuff
my STUFF tells me I want TO DO.

I thought yesterday in fact, that since I'm starting to do stuff and not simply admire other people's stuff, I can get more done if I do a little bit of something, a few times a week, and not beat myself up if I can't get all of them done at once, and slowly get to a manageable, workable routine (whew, seriously out of breath on that one.)

For the next 3 months, I'd like to devote:

 "X" amount of time to reading & responding to mails,
"X" amount of time to deleting & organizing my iPhone photos; and,
"X" amount of time to cleaning & organizing my stuff.

Hmmm, somehow, for someone who likes odd numbers, I managed to have 2 things per 3 things to To Do ... but 2 + 3 = 5, so I'm good.  

 

There is every bit of logic to that way of thinking, trust me.

 

Now, all I have to do is put that into motion. I'm hoping that if I relent and tell myself it's okay to be tired after a rough, busy day, it'll sink in and I won't feel guilty that I didn't run that marathon of cleaning my entire home in a day or two. Nor will I look at the folders on my iMac and find myself playing that game I downloaded years ago that's still so much  fun, and I only want to play just one more game. For real. Just 1 ...

The time is now 1500 (that's 3:00 pm), an alarm just went off ... 

21,094 | 13,524

... there is a lot to be said for simplicity.

13,791 and 207

I just added a photo and deleted a video

...sigh ...