Keeping My Sanity

Breakfast--cheddar cheese pasty, sausage roll, and chai latte--at the Brentwood Social House, my Austin favorite morning hangout for the days I take J to school. Today I need to work on financial administration and taxes, and this is a great distraction-free place to do it... though I guess posting counts as a distraction. But I'm waiting for transactions to download so I have a couple of minutes.

It's the end of February, close enough to March that I can say I made my prediction for the year just about perfectly. Back in December, during the sleeping months, I made grand plans for all the things I was going to do this year--restart the Master's program in ikebana; start the master's program in handspinning; revamp my business model and website; spin for 15 minutes a day; set-up my new glass studio; continue remodeling the new house; put in major gardens, a pond and bees; do a knit-along; take a drawing class; pick-up a pottery class again; renovate the apartment above the garage and set it up for renting through Homeaway or AirBnB; blog every day; and do the 365 project and submit a picture every day. Now I sit in the BSH listening to Wagonwheel performed by the Old Crow Medicine Show, and I laugh at myself. As expected, the train rattled out of the station in January, and now it's hurtling toward certain destruction if it keeps going as it is. Normally this would be the point where I would throw my hands up in the air and just give up on a bunch of stuff (and that was my prediction for the year: hurtling into fiery oblivion). Or I would try to make unrealistic life changes to keep everything.

In past years about this time, instead of giving up on activities, I have vowed to give up on sleep--if I started earlier in the day and finished later at night I could get everything done. But there are two flaws with that idea. First, it doesn't take into account the need for family downtime, and second, it's stupid. This year I'm going to try something else. I'm going to keep all the activities, but I'm not going to keep the amount of them I have to do--in fact the concept of _have_ to do for any of them . Drawing and pottery (which starts in a month) have set times each week and I know from past experience I can manage two classes a week. The knit-along ends just as pottery begins so that will take care of that one. I might not finish the homework for the Master Spinner's class in time to take the second class in April as a distance learning class and the third class at Old's College in Alberta in June (there is anywhere from 150-250 hours of homework for each). It might actually take me six years to complete, and that's okay. I can continue ikebana if I set a day for it, like Sunday, when J and I can do it together, and we each do one arrangement. For the rest, they won't get done in one pass. It'll take as long as it takes to get them done.

Yesterday I spent enough time in the studio to clean up and organize three working areas and get a kiln load in. I left those areas still clean when I finished so next time I can work on another area. I don't need to get the studio or the apartment set up in one balls-out day. I don't need to get anything done in one pass. Pick it up, work on it for awhile, put it down without guilt, and move on. The hardest thing, as I was reminded anew yesterday, is just starting. Take away the balk at the beginning, the inertia, and the tasks themselves are easy. Take away the need for a deadline and the stress and guilt are gone with just the joy remaining.

Now my accounts have updated and it's time to reconcile shit. Rock me mama. (PS--Just found out the great music this morning is from the Jason Isbell station on Spotify: Townes Van Zandt "Dollar Bill Blues", Jason Isbell "24 Frames", Old Cow Medicine Show "Wagonwheel". It just made my favorite stations list!)