Routine Issues

One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was that I had a whole bunch of lingering craft projects that I just needed to FINISH AND BE DONE WITH THEM, GOSH DARN IT!

Well, I've finished a couple of them, but I'm still procrastinating. The past couple of weeks are a good example of my justifications.

My sister and her husband didn't get a chance to take their honeymoon right after their wedding last September, so they decided to do a one-year honeymoon/anniversary trip. They were gone for two weeks and I volunteered to housesit for them. In my mind, this would be a good chance to get outside of my home and finally finish a couple of projects. And by a couple, I mean four that have been hanging over my head for anywhere between four months and a full year. 

It seemed like a good plan - the only thing on my plate was to go home after work and let the dog out. Because of the dog, I couldn't really go anywhere in the evening - she needs to be taken out every 4-6 hours. That time restraint made it easy to just be at home instead of going out and socializing.

But the best-laid plans...

See, my sister has a dog and a cat. The dog gets severe separation anxiety and will eat anything that you leave out when you leave. Simple solution: close everything in the bedrooms. But the cat knows how to open doors, so the cat will open a bedroom door and the dog will eat things.

That's how this happened:

I came home after work to find my yarn EVERYWHERE. I wasn't overly concerned because there didn't appear to be much damage done to the actual yarn - the cat just really liked pulling it around. But then I went upstairs. And I found this:

THAT is the remains of the stuffing of a project that I've been working on for over a year now. Something that's just been hanging onto the end of my list of things to do. The rest of it ended up in the dog's stomach. And now I feel like I'm back to square one with the project.

Motivation is really hard for me right now. I'm not sure if it's because I'm trying to do to many things or if I'm just not excited about the things I'm doing, but if anybody has any tips or tricks for finishing a languishing project (besides "just do it" - it might work for Nike, but it hasn't been working for me!), I would love to hear them!

First Monday Post!

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to start blogging twice per week. This was to give me more structure and to encourage myself to spend more time working on my blog (for example, I really hate the color scheme, so the more I look at it, the more I want to change it!).

My Monday posts are going to be more of my self-help stuff. I'm a 20-something college grad who has very little idea what is going on in her life; I'm happy to report that I have a job that I adore, but that's about all that I have figured out. So this is going to be a way to prove to myself that I am slowly but surely "figuring it out."

It's lucky that this first Monday post has landed on the 1st of the month, because I've decided to start setting monthly goals! (Edit: Turns out, even if you have a post scheduled to publish, it won't publish if it's set as "draft." Eh, you live and learn, right?) There is a lot of research on how important goals are to a person's well-being, so in the wake of my post-graduation collapse (of body and mind, I must say), I realized that unless I set goals for myself, I'm going to just stagnate.

So I have a list of discrete goals for myself that I'm trying to work toward, but those are more long-term. I need short-term goals to keep me going. To that end, I'll be setting three goals to focus on over the course of the month. Analyst that I am, I'll have metrics by which to measure my success so that at the end of the month, I can say whether I succeeded or failed in a given month. Oh, and there's also going to be extra credit for each goal. Because I like bonus rounds.

So happy July! Here are my goals:

• Get in the groove of posting on your blog
• There's a reason that you started this blog. Don't give up on it!
• What does success look like? The August goal post being the 10th post since this one.
• What does failure look like? Fewer than 8 posts over the course of July. Shame.
• BONUS: Travel posts from California and Boston!
• Get back on board with Couch-to-5k
• I started this program in May and loved it, but then I skipped a couple work outs, and that was the end of that.
• What does success look like? Completing Week 5 of the program by the August goal post.
• What does failure look like? Failing to make running a habit over the course of the month - not getting through 5 weeks of the program
• BONUS: Do research on/register for an organize 5k.
• Budget budget budget!
• I am kind of a failure at personal finances right now. I mean, I'm not totally broke, but I find myself running thin or relying on my credit card near the end of a pay period. I can do better.
• What does success look like? A written list of every expenditure over the course of the month  (extreme, yes, but I'm sick of feeling poor when I make a comfortable amount of money). From this, I should be able to draft a reasonable budget, complete with timeline within a month. 
• What does failure look like? A credit card bill with the same balance as last month.
• BONUS: Allocating small amounts to save toward larger purchases (dresser, drill, bedroom rug)

So that's what I hope to do with the next 30 (Edit: 29) days. I'll let you all know how it goes. Wish me luck!

Bruin Games

My high school mascot was the Bruin. A mighty creature, often mistakenly understood to be a pregnant bear, it is just a Dutch way of saying "brown bear." (Wikipedia says so)

While I was in high school, a few of the sports teams fell into the habit of losing. But not just losing outright; we would be in the lead for the first 2/3 of the game, then lose our lead and the game by the time the game was over.

It was really rough on morale.

Well, I've fallen into a sort of Bruin game habit in my life. I'll come up with an idea for a project and get super-excited about it, do a little research, maybe even buy supplies. But then I'll suddenly lose steam and I end up with a stack of Ikea clocks on my desk and balls and balls of yarn just laying around.

Bruin games of life are why I wanted to start blogging. I wanted a reason to finish projects, because the satisfaction of finishing a project was clearly not enough to make it happen. Maybe, optimistic Kath would think, maybe if I have a deadline, a schedule, maybe then I could actually accomplish things.

Now I have a blog with two posts since its creation in September and the same number of pending projects. Oops.

So I'm going to up the ante. I'm going to give myself even more structure. This is going to be a TWO POST PER WEEK BLOG!

But Kath, incredulous audiences protest, how could you possibly make two posts per week when you couldn't even handle one?!

Well, I'll tell you.

I'm going to have Monday posts and Saturday posts. Monday's posts are going to be me creating goals for the month (finish a project per week, get back on the Couch-to-5k bandwagon, etc) and Saturday's posts are going to be finished projects/tutorials/tips'n'tricks/etc.

Can y'all get behind that? I'm so excited about it that I already have Saturday's post written and scheduled to publish! I'm ahead of schedule! Can  you believe it?!

Anyway, once I get into the rhythm of this, I'll actually start working on spreading this blog to readers. But I want there to be some content before I do that. So here goes.

See you Saturday!