Here I am... What Would We Be If We Didn't Try?

Two days left of vacation. Two days where I have nothing to do but think, dream, plan, and write. So how do I spend them to squeeze every last little morsel of goodness and benefit out of the time? 

I could work on my book edits as I have done for the past few days. Thanks to Adobe and MacOS, editing is a slog. They got into a tiff, and Adobe Acrobat decided to "substitute" one font in my manuscript for another.--with no way for me to stop it, and no way to undo the change. In reality, it didn't really swap out the font, it just randomly dropped letters out of over 500 words scattered throughout the manuscript. When I tried to fix the problems in Adobe InDesign (the original editing program), InDesign gleefully added hidden, overlapping text boxes all over the pdf. I'm back to editing in Acrobat (and saving a new version of the edits every half hour). In the past two days I have corrected about 95% of the dropped letters, but only got as far as page 44 in the formatting edits. Bottom line: There is no way I can meet the January 15 publishing date I set for myself even if I do nothing but heads-down edit for the next two days. 

Alternatively I can use the time to white-board (as Dave would call it), and plan what I'm going to/have to do when I get back. Being the all-or-nothing creature that I am, as I pondered the second option just now, I thought how sad it was going to be because I won't be adding anything new. I'll just be trying to wrap up everything I've already started; unpacking, setting up studios, finishing projects in flight, taking the next steps on the farm, doing my own little twist on the Swedish death cleanse (look it up, it's a thing). 

What I won't be doing is jumping into any new ideas--like the headboard for our bed that finally started designing itself in my head this morning. Artistic design: With the blue pine, mesquite, walnut, spalted pecan, and other wood varieties I have been hoarding, do an inlay of the Mission Mountains: a reflection of the actual view outside the windows. Technical design: make the headboard a flat panel in four sections--each one can be pressed back into a second track and slid to the side to reveal a storage area behind. Beautiful, clean, elegant, and tricky. And also not achievable until the garage is cleaned out and the wood studio set up. SO there's that.

I love new, shiny things (squirrel!), but instead of hopping around, I really need to build a focused plan and try to follow it. Yes, I know it's the start of a new year, and it's a common time for people to go overboard trying to fix everything in their lives at once by making sweeping changes to diet, exercise, alcohol intake, meditation, finances, time-management, on and on. And yet, I can't help but try. What would we be if we didn't even try?  

Sounds like I worked through what to do as I lie in the sun, soaking up as much vitamin D as my body can stand: whiteboard it is! And maybe, just maybe... no, damnit, I will DEFINITELY enjoy doing everything I plan--new or not.