Organizationally Challenged

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That’s me.  Except when it’s not.  At home, I am a disaster.  I can’t seem to keep up with the housework, making dinner is a chore that I constantly have to remind myself to do, and no matter how much stuff I get rid of there always seems to be too much left over.  That’s “Home Me,” somewhere about half way between a beautiful house (although nowhere near Martha Stewart) and Hoarders.

Cut to “Work Me,” who is apparently a totally different person.  Here is a short excerpt from my review yesterday:

Her organizational abilities and attention to detail show in all the work she produces.

And no, my supervisor wasn’t just being nice.  At work, I am VERY organized.  I always have been, even when I worked in jobs I hated.  It’s even easier, comes even more naturally, in this job, which I love.

So how can I be so completely and utterly competent and organized at work and so…NOT at home?

In part, there are many more distractions at home.  Kids, husband, pets, TV, Computer; they all lead down a path that does not end in a clean and organized home or life.  Still, I’m trying to figure out ways to get my organizational skills, which based on my work life do in fact exist to show themselves at home.  Here are some things I know:

1) At work, everything has a place.  I’m still working on that at home.

2) At work, I move straight from one task to the next.  I do occasionally take a break, but only for a few minutes since I’m only there part-time.  On my “good” days at home, I do the same thing.  On the rest of my days, I can’t seem to build up any momentum at all.

3) I cannot plan any big projects for the two or three days a week when I have to transport my children to or from various places once I get out of work.  Just doing that, supervising homework, making and having dinner and getting M. bathed and ready for bed take up all of my time.  Those days are out as productive ones.

4) I need to make the most of the other four or five days a week when I’m home after work or off altogether.

How good are you at time management?  Work load management?

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July Goals

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It’s July.  It’s actually the 13th of July, so I’m a bit late posting my goals for the month.  Call it being over-extended, call it procrastination, call it just plain lazy.  Frankly, any one of those (and perhaps all) could be true at any given moment, so it doesn’t really matter what you call it.  I need some focus.  Thus the goals each month.  Here are July’s:

1. Work more regularly on SciFi site.  By more regularly, I mean that by the end of the month I want to know what the hell I’m doing, and have at least a rough idea about what I’m planning to do.

2. Submit at least three articles a week (7 days, not work week) to Examiner.com.

3. Figure out a schedule for us for when M. starts preschool in the fall and start following it at the end of the month.

4. Find another part-time job (real world, paying, a few hours a week).

5. Start eating healthier.  (Ass-reduction program, we’ll call it.)

There you have it.  Those are the things I would like to do this month.  What are you doing?  Lazing on the beach, working, procrastinating?  All of the above?

Related articles

• Your July Get Organized Checklist (creativeorganizing.typepad.com)

 

Farm Life

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I was thinking about farms today.  Bear with me, I have a point.

Farmers (and I’m speaking in very general terms here) are up before dawn, sometimes at four a.m.  They work all day long, taking breaks for meals but otherwise moving from one task to another, frequently until after sunset.  They can’t just sleep in because they’re tired, or not do their chores because they aren’t motivated today.  There are cows to be milked, animals to be tended, crops to be grown, equipment to be fixed.  There is no room for procrastination, laziness, or “I don’t feel like it right now.”

Why can’t we be more like that?  Why can’t I?  No reason.  None at all.  There is just no excuse for it, not a real one in any case.  Generally, it all boils down to laziness.

“I didn’t have time to write today.”  Translation:  I had time, but I spent it online or watching tv or out spending money I shouldn’t spend.

“I didn’t get to that yet.”  Translation:  I could have, but playing “Words With Friends” seemed more important.

I have a million excuses, and none of them mean a damn thing when you come right down to it.  I need to stop making excuses and start accomplishing more in the course of a day.  I’m pretty sure some of you do too.

Now, before anyone gets all up in arms, I’m not talking about people with legitimate reasons for not doing a lot.  I understand that illness, injury and many other things can actually interfere with your ability to get things done.  I’m not talking to you.  I’m talking to people like me who could do more, but don’t.

So.  I’m going to start working on cleaning up my act mentally.  I’m going to try to break the habit of putting things off and giving in to “I don’t want to.”  I’m going to try to take my lead from farmers and do what needs to be done, and shut up about it.  Well, except to post updates here.

What are you going to do this week?

Related Articles

• Am I really just plain lazy? (hitachiinlover.wordpress.com)
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What you’ve missed

 

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St. Patrick’s Day was M.’s 3rd birthday.  The two older kids and I ate dinner with her and sang her Happy Birthday again over a cake made in a ladybug mold but colored green in honor of the holiday.  S. said it looked like a turtle, and M. agreed so instead of being a St. Patrick’s Day ladybug, it was a turtle cake.  There was frosting, there were sprinkles, M. was happy.

I have sent out a story to two different magazines and a poem to another in the last week.  All three have months-long wait periods before you hear anything at all, and since they are only first submissions I’m not expecting much, but I had to at least get the process started.  I wanted to get used to the idea of contributing so that it will be a more regular occurrence.

I saw over the weekend that there is a short-story writing contest in my area and I’m trying to put something decent together to submit.  Submissions are accepted until April 22, so I still have time.  I just need to make sure I can get one of my preliminary ideas to work out as a story.  It’s sponsored by the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, both in Hartford right next door to each other.  If you’re ever in the area and get to visit, you should.  They are very cool houses in their own rights just because they are fine examples of architecture and decor, but that they were the homes of such great authors makes them twice as interesting.  I’ve always been partial to the Twain house, partly because I’m a bigger fan of his writing than of Stowe’s and partly because there are some great stories/facts that are part of the tour of his house.  When I was a kid (8 or 9) I used to imagine living there or at Gillette’s Castle (in East Lyme…or is it Old Lyme?) which was another of our vacation haunts.

I had two court appointments having to do with the house (one with the bank, one with the ex) scheduled for the same day, which I thought was very efficient of me.  The 9:30 appt. got messed up on my end by a lack of a phone call that I was unaware I had to make and had to be rescheduled.  The noon appt. was rescheduled by the bank because they’re still waiting on paperwork on their end before they have any info for me at all.  Basically, I wasted the better part of the day not dealing with things that ultimately were both rescheduled, or at least will be once all the paperwork has processed.  So much for efficiency.

I have done exactly zero work on my book.  I have been tied up with household finances and cleaning and other mundane but necessary tasks, and really have just been dicking around not doing anything productive other than the bare minimum.  That is going to have to stop.  Tomorrow I’m starting to work with a time log.  It’s more to force me to admit to myself that I waste a LOT of time doing nothing (email, Twitter, iPod, etc) than to show me where my time is going.  I’m not asking myself what is happening to all my time.  I know it’s being pissed away on crap.  I just need to force myself to be a grown up and get back to work.

Do you find yourself wondering where your day has gone?  If you were brutally honest with yourself, would you really need to ask?  Would you like the answer?

 

Yesterday marked 14 days straight of writing for me.  I have listened to writers and writing magazines and blogs tout the benefits and importance of writing every day.  I listen to Mur Lafferty‘s podcast*, “I Should Be Writing.”  I have always agreed with them, but I have never been able to find the time to do it.  I finally signed up for the February Challenge on 750words.com and have stuck with it.  It’s not because I suddenly “found” the time to write.  It’s because I created the time to write.  I promised myself to write a minimum of 750 words every single day this month, including weekends and holidays, sick days and days out of the house.  Every single day.  And I have remained on track because I don’t try to find time to write, I just write.
I get up in the morning and write first thing if I can.  If I can’t, I either write while M. is napping, or after dinner.  If I haven’t done my writing by 9 p.m., I have promised myself that I will drop what I am doing, no matter what it is, and do my writing.  Because generally what I’m doing at 9 p.m.  is throwing in one more load of laundry, or watching TV, or playing pointless yet brainsucking games on my iPod.  I am almost never doing anything important enough that it should come before writing.
Finding time is usually a crock.  If you try to “find” time, it implies that every minute of your day is taken up with activities so valuable that you have to search long and hard to unearth a few precious extra minutes somewhere so you can do what you want.  How many of us are actually that important?  I know I’m not!  I have a husband, a house, three children, three cats and lots to do.  I still don’t have so much to do that I am using every minute of every day to its fullest.  I have plenty of time, I don’t need to find it.  I just need to stop wasting it.
So that’s what I’ve done, or at least it’s what I’m trying to do.  I’m still working on balancing finding work, writing, learning how to write, and editing my writing with keeping my house at least clean enough that we wouldn’t fail a health inspection and we have enough clean dishes to eat dinner.  But that’s another post for another day.
What are you doing that is using up time when you could be writing, or crafting, or doing whatever it is that you want to do for you–not for your husband or kids or dog, just for yourself?  I can guarantee that whatever that thing that you want to do is, it’s not “I really want to watch more TV,” or “If only I could spend MORE time online!”  What’s keeping you from doing it?
Don’t find the time for it, make the time for it.  Or better yet, take the time back.  Something is stealing it from you.  Take it back.

 

*Find “I Should Be Writing” and all other Mur-related news at the Murverse.  If you’re a writer or a podcaster and don’t know who she is, you should.