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.