On goals

I have too much stuff I want to do. Way too much.

I want to redecorate my house. I want to do my cross stitching. I want to cook fabulous meals on a nightly basis. I want to sew adorable little clothes for my daughter. I want to plant more roses. I want to get back to quilting. I want to work through my stacks of books. I want to organize all my recipes. I want to (well more like I need to) purge the kids’ toy boxes of all the toys that they don’t play with. I want to exercise more. I want to work on photography and editing photos. I want to maintain my website and keep my blog more active. I want to volunteer with organizations that I find important. And lately… don’t tell my husband… but I want to write a book. AB would reply, “you’ve done that, twice now, right? Your dissertation and that 250 page deliverable this past February counts too!” Nope, this one is fiction, I would love to write a fictional novel and I even have an idea stirring around in my head. But don’t tell AB.

Motivation? I have it in abundance. What I don’t have is time.

My lists can often times seem daunting. The purpose of my monthly goals that I started 2.5 years ago was to take a month to focus on one thing at a time. It has done a world of good for me. Things get accomplished. AB has been quite supportive of my monthly goals, particularly the ones that don’t involve tasks for him. But even he gets into the groove with the monthly tasks and asks on occasion, “what’s next month?”

My goal for July, knowing how busy the month was shaping up to be was to choose paint for the dining room. AB got on board and we have a front runner and a few runner up selections. The final decision has been postponed however because the lighting in the dining room sucks. Sucks royally.

Hence the August goals.

The first of the August goals is to get a chandelier selected. We have selected three chandelier options. We need to pick one and order it. August Goal #1 – select, order, receive and install chandelier.

August Goal #2 – Select paint colors.

I know ourselves well enough to know that it may take the entire month of August to get Goal #1 completed. Yes, I know. It shouldn’t take that long. But it will. Give me a week for a decision, a week or two for it to arrive and a week or two to get the thing hung and we are at the end of August. Blammo. August is gone. My plan is to shorten this critical path in order to enable task #2 to take hold and deliver at the end of August, thus enabling a long weekend of painting over Labor Day. We never do anything for Labor Day anyway. That would make the September Goal a complete and painted redecorated dining room that includes a little reorg, some new linens and draperies. (I can wish all I want for new flooring in there… but that will be a goal for another time.)

But let’s jump back to August…

August is a pretty open month for us without much on the schedule. A lot of the August goal, while critical path, includes down time for me. Me actually doing anything short of making a decision and hitting click? Not much there for the first 2/3 of the month.

So I need August Goal #3.

What I really should do is to declutter the kids’ toys. But that isn’t a fun goal. I need a fun goal.

Yesterday I got a little huffy at work and I needed some downtime. So I flipped open a Pottery Barn catalog that somehow made its way into my purse. I normally go straight to the trash can with such items lest our credit card inflate itself.

And I fell in love.

Isn’t it pretty?

The thing about PB stuff – at least a lot of it – is that many of the items can easily be made. As a quilter… err… umm… former quilter, I looked at this and said “easy peasy”.

I started quilting back about 1997. I did a quilt completely by hand and backed it with a sheet. Mostly just to say I could do it. Then I bought a book of quilting patterns. Then I bought a nice sewing machine since I was nowhere near my mom and her sewing machine anymore and started quilting with a vengeance. I made wall hanging quilts, I made a large queen sized quilt that became AB’s and my summer bed cover for years. Maybe even nearly a decade. I still have it but the poor thing has seen better days. It is worn in beautifully at this point, but a bit fragile for a bed that kids crawl onto. I made each of the kids quilts for their births.

Then reality hit. And the reason that I have the “I want” list above. Kids take up time. And my sewing machine went to the back of the closet and I started avoiding fabric stores at all costs. (That whole inflatable credit card thingy again.)

I want a new quilt. I could never spend the $250 on that quilt because I look at it and see how so very easy it would be to make that quilt.

Think I can do it in three weekends?

Ready… set… GO!