(no subject)
So today is supposed to be the beginning. Kids back to school and now I am to get serious. It occurs to me that maybe I scoped things a bit too wide. Get fit, finish book, read everything?
Oh, and there's still the matter of my cheese addiction. Yeah, that's been contained but not extinguished.
Change is hard to implement. For one thing, it causes one to use words like "implement." As though the Board got together and came up with a list of Action Items regarding Life, places where the dynamism isn't quite strategic enough and the data is all trending south.
What I mean is, I need a reasonable plan for change. I dreamed all summer of creating a strict schedule (please don't laugh; no, I can hear you laughing) that would make room for the three things I need to tackle regularly. I dreamed of getting back to work. I have, after all, a manuscript just sitting there and if I think too much about how long I've been failing to manage it, I seriously lose heart. It is time to convert. (That's a basketball phrase. It means that your team has the ball but if you fail to convert, you aren't actually getting it through the little metal hoop with the basket underneath it. That's me. I've had possession of the ball for a long time, but can't convert.)
The problem is that I lack focus and discipline, both of which are very boring. When I get revved up about my stories -- or sometimes I reread sections of my manuscript -- I start out thinking about one story, but very soon I'm thinking about two. And then three. And then eight. And thinking about eight stories is a good way to get overwhelmed and need to go straight to bed. Habit change comes with small steps. Everything I know tells me that.
And modest goals.
I got both my kids off to school today at wildly different times and then fell straight into the Second Sleep Trap that I had been fearing all summer [Aside: now is when a coffee habit would come in handy. I cannot, for health reasons, drink coffee or, for that matter, have anything caffeinated. But seriously. Coffee. Could change a lot of things.] and slept for three hours. THIS IS PRECISELY HOW SHIT SHOULD NOT GO DOWN THIS YEAR. But I did have a fantastic horror story dream involving Yalies (men who went Yale University --that is, preppy men, totally alien to me) and their camera. We were crossing paths in a nature center at a remote trailhead, the kind with a fancy restaurant attached. No one else was around except for my little E, who was changing out of her school clothes into hiking gear, and the laughing Yalies wanted me to take their picture together in a certain place. I said sure, absolutely, no problem, so long as they could promise (and here I knew I was onto something) that they could promise nothing bad would come to me as a result of doing so. Specifically, that no werewolves (seriously, yes, werewolves) would emerge from the huge black plate glass window behind them.
They could not give me any such assurances, though they tried to distract me with Yale jokes. They all wore dinner jackets.
I am so screwed.
Oh, and there's still the matter of my cheese addiction. Yeah, that's been contained but not extinguished.
Change is hard to implement. For one thing, it causes one to use words like "implement." As though the Board got together and came up with a list of Action Items regarding Life, places where the dynamism isn't quite strategic enough and the data is all trending south.
What I mean is, I need a reasonable plan for change. I dreamed all summer of creating a strict schedule (please don't laugh; no, I can hear you laughing) that would make room for the three things I need to tackle regularly. I dreamed of getting back to work. I have, after all, a manuscript just sitting there and if I think too much about how long I've been failing to manage it, I seriously lose heart. It is time to convert. (That's a basketball phrase. It means that your team has the ball but if you fail to convert, you aren't actually getting it through the little metal hoop with the basket underneath it. That's me. I've had possession of the ball for a long time, but can't convert.)
The problem is that I lack focus and discipline, both of which are very boring. When I get revved up about my stories -- or sometimes I reread sections of my manuscript -- I start out thinking about one story, but very soon I'm thinking about two. And then three. And then eight. And thinking about eight stories is a good way to get overwhelmed and need to go straight to bed. Habit change comes with small steps. Everything I know tells me that.
And modest goals.
I got both my kids off to school today at wildly different times and then fell straight into the Second Sleep Trap that I had been fearing all summer [Aside: now is when a coffee habit would come in handy. I cannot, for health reasons, drink coffee or, for that matter, have anything caffeinated. But seriously. Coffee. Could change a lot of things.] and slept for three hours. THIS IS PRECISELY HOW SHIT SHOULD NOT GO DOWN THIS YEAR. But I did have a fantastic horror story dream involving Yalies (men who went Yale University --that is, preppy men, totally alien to me) and their camera. We were crossing paths in a nature center at a remote trailhead, the kind with a fancy restaurant attached. No one else was around except for my little E, who was changing out of her school clothes into hiking gear, and the laughing Yalies wanted me to take their picture together in a certain place. I said sure, absolutely, no problem, so long as they could promise (and here I knew I was onto something) that they could promise nothing bad would come to me as a result of doing so. Specifically, that no werewolves (seriously, yes, werewolves) would emerge from the huge black plate glass window behind them.
They could not give me any such assurances, though they tried to distract me with Yale jokes. They all wore dinner jackets.
I am so screwed.