Two weeks ago, life was rudely interrupted by my gallbladder pitching a fit to such an extent that I found myself faced with emergency surgery to remove the offending body part. This was not on my schedule at all. I didn’t even know I had gallstones let alone that they were large enough that they could cause issues, so for me this came out of the blue. Laying in bed I got to thinking, as one does where there’s nothing else to do, about how fragile our plans are and how quickly things take a header.

I am all about schedules and lists and plans, its the only way I can get anything done, if I keep myself moving forward with lists. There was a lot I had planned to do last week, 3 quilts to bind, wanted to get another quilt on the long arm, piecing to do, 2 projects that are so old I think they are going to disintegrate before I can get them finished and I got absolutely zero accomplished on that list. I had to spend the whole week focusing on healing, which is very important, I understand that, but I lost all momentum in the sewing room.

In my head, it’s like riding a unicycle on a high wire while juggling plates. Once I get things going, it is important to keep things going. Any pause or hesitation will derail the entire thing. Making progress on my list is what keeps momentum focused on the list and I get more done. Every time I have to stop (and fall into the proverbial net, plates crashing all around me), I have to climb back up to that wire, get the unicycle started again and then I can start spinning plates. I don’t know if anybody else works this way, where you have to spin up a certain amount of forward progress before things seem to move along, but I think I’ve always been that way, I just finally understand this about myself.

So the challenge now is to get things going again, get moving and get those plates spinning. How do you restart things when you get derailed? Do you have a process you use? For me, I will need to spend a day revising my list to things I know I can accomplish while I’m still healing. It gets overwhelming to keep things on my list I can’t possibly tackle the next few weeks. I also need to get caught back up on my blog post writing, but that’s a bit tricky with a fuzzy brain. I have a couple of topics mapped out but right now they swim in and out of focus so fast that I can’t pin any of them down. Maybe that will improve with time as well.

In a bit of nifty timing, Amy Ellis from Amyscreativeside.com has launched her one thing challenge this month – identify one thing you want to get done sewing wise on Monday and then check in on Friday for completion, so that you do one thing each week. I’ve signed up as I think this will really help spur some action in my world, go check out her blog!

Ok world. Getting my list together. Signed up with Amy. Get those plates spinning again…