Bit by Bit

I am overwhelmed.

Late last month (and early this one), I made a list of all the things I must (actually should) do ASAP. You know, projects I've started that I want to finish, web sites that I'm supposed to maintain that have not been touched in years...that sort of thing.

I feel like I have no energy, no space and no time to do what needs to be done.

Every time I contemplate that list, I feel like taking a nap and not waking up until the next day.

So, I have developed a strategy for dealing with the (at least half dozen) projects which need attention: work on them bit by bit, break them down into manageable pieces.

For instance, I haven't updated my "home" web site since 2005! Up until that point, I had been trying to put everything I was into and all my favorite links, etc on that site. 

It had the oldest version of the Piece by Piece site as my jewelry page, with pieces long since sold or taken apart and remade. It had my flying page, when I haven't been able to afford to fly in over 8 years. It had links to projects from classes I took over 5 years ago.  

Needless to day, it needed to be cleaned up!

What prompted my contemplation of my sites is that I'm looking for a place to post the new quilt block directions which I have decided to write once a month.

My first thought was to post them on my Dear Jane site, but I have been planning on reorganizing and recoding that site longer than my home site and it's in much worse shape (although probably a better place for handling alot of web traffic.)

Then, there's the Rafael Sabatini site, updated every January to a greater or lesser extent.

Then, there's the several dozen quilt projects, jewelry projects, chores, etc that need to get done.

The only way I can do them, I have found is to schedule myself to work on 5 Rafael Sabatini pages per day, 3 Dear Jane pages per day, 5 quilt blocks per day, 3 chores per day, etc. If I get MORE than that done, great, but that's the minimum.

It seems to be working for now, though the results are mixed.  My home site is mostly cleaned up (except for my resume.) And I have come up with new templates for Dear Jane and the parts of Sabatini that were not redesigned last year.

I finished my sister's half of the DNA project except for one final border and the embroidery.

I have time to work on my kumihimo (although not as much as before, since I'm scheduling time to work on these other projects as well) and my jewelry, which is good since we're looking at scheduling a jewelry sale/fund raiser for Peg in the spring.

And I can now actually think of things like SCHEDULING and ORGANIZING the jewelry fundraiser (and, oh joy, gathering and updating things for my taxes) without also looking longingly for the bottle of No-Doz.

No More Whining

OK, so we're done with the holidays and it's a new year. I've decided to make up a list of things I want to accomplish this year. I'm not calling them "New Years Resolutions" because that, to me, is the kiss of death. None of my New Years Resolutions seem to last past January (except the ones that come back to haunt me in unpleasant ways in the future.)

After an orgy of complaining, venting,"pointing out" and, yes, whining, I have decided to whine no more. I will not whine about the fact that every time maintenance came in to fix something, they forgot to fix ALL the things listed in the maintenance request.

Or, the fact that there seems to be a new definition for shovelling out the front steps of the building which means that more than 24 hours after the end of the snow storm (you know, the deadline they give you for cleaning off your car or it will towed), there's still snow all over the steps. (No whining about the new decision by the building's corporate management about using sand instead of salt, either.) Peggy must go out: I must shovel. Complaining doesn't seem to help. End of discussion.

On a more positive note: projects for next year include writing directions for at least one quilting block each month, like the mouse block I did in December (I'm not yet sure where I will post them). The blocks will probably be in the public domain (i.e. traditional) so I can concentrate on writing directions instead of tracking down the copyright holders (a neat trick since the copyrights of quilt blocks are really hard to pin down.)

I will, eventually, update the code and information on all my web sites, starting with The Life and Work of Rafael Sabatini. As you know, if you've been reading my blog, my partner in this enterprise (upon whose research the site is based) died in December. I only got through about half the design update last year before things got in the way, so this year, I will definitely finish it and fix all the links which were accidentally left broken.

Other pages include my home page (which hasn't been touched in, probably, 3 years, other than to update my resume) and a complete revamping of the photography on the Piece by Piece Jewelry site. I will probably move my Dear Jane journal site to my home page during it's badly needed recoding update.

Whew. And that's just the online list. I have other projects which include learning how to make t0fu that tastes good and doesn't have the consistency of slime....but maybe that's a topic for another day.