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Labor Day Holiday

This Monday is celebrated as the Labor Day Holiday in America. The first Monday of September. Labor Day is widely regarded as the “end of summer” in the US. The cultural summer season is bookended by Memorial Day at the end of May and Labor Day at the start of September. Both are holidays with very somber origins that are celebrated by parties and cookouts and much gaiety. Rather ironic if you think about it.

I am torn between being a lazy bum all weekend and making really good use of the time. I am slowly getting things unpacked at the house. The box room is such a jumble of boxes that I can’t work on a single space. I have to take the next box I can reach and unpack whatever it is and put it away. Other than the pile of empty boxes getting larger, it is very difficult to tell if I am making any headway.

I have gotten one set of shelves installed in the office, have another set to do. That will help give the space to put things away. I had already built my IKEA units, but I finally got them anchored to the wall, so I can start to put stuff on those this weekend as well. Of course I would like to carve out some time to sew, but I’m not sure I have enough stuff unpacked to do that. My natural impatience is catching up with me, but at some point I will be able to do what I want.

I am thinking about starting a hashtag of #honesthousemoving or something like that. Instead of showing carefully manicured shots that look like a spread out of House Beautiful, I should show you the chaos and destruction that is just out of view. It will come together, after a lot of hard work, and it will be worth it, I just need to put some time in. I hope you and yours have a lovely time and I hope you find some relaxation this weekend. I’m going to try to end up with a nice mix of working on the house and getting some R&R on the books.

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Hello from the other side of the move

Well, two weeks have past and I’ve moved out of my old house out to the farm. Old house is sold and done. Everything I own is at the farm in some fashion. Mostly in boxes. In the spare room. I’m sure it goes without saying in detail that I can’t find much of anything at all, but I’m here. The unpacking can take it’s time and be done right, there’s no reason to hurry up and be frantic about it. I want to be more mindful of the stuff.

I have done a LOT of decluttering/downsizing over the last two years in anticipation of this move. This house is smaller but even if it were not, I don’t need to keep hanging onto the weight of all the accumulated stuff (I’m being polite here). So unpacking needs to be a continuation of that, deciding about every single item if I really want to keep it or not.

I’m still going to cut up my fabric stash. I got a lot of that accomplished already but packing showed me just how much more of that I have to go.

Man, 30 years of quilting has resulted in a LOT OF FABRIC. And notions. And stuff.

This has been an emotional journey, maybe more than I realized it would be. I shredded 350 pounds of paper out of my office and that was an emotional ride let me tell you. I kept just about everything so I had old performance reviews from jobs 25 years ago. I let all of that go. I had kept corporate awards that I thought were stupid at the time, that have even less meaning now if that’s even possible. Those are now gone too. I want to surround myself with things that have POSITIVE meaning for me. Nothing but POSITIVE vibes in this house.

I know I’m rambling a bit, but trying to put the enormity of the last two weeks into a blog post is tricky. This move has been in the works for 8 years, and to have it finally come to completion is mind boggling to me. I also keep having dreams that I left something really important in the old house that I need to go back and get. I have to keep reminding myself that I did THREE walkthroughs and there was nothing left anywhere in that house. All of this will just take time for my brain and heart to comprehend.

In the mean time, my dog is finding out just how big the back yard is, and how much there is to explore. I need to take a cue from him and let my own world get bigger instead of smaller with this move. Blog posts should also resume their normal frequency again. I have missed writing on a regular basis.

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Control what you can, release the rest

Things in my life are pretty upside down right now. Trying to finish building a house, manage a move, dealing with a LOT of upheaval and change at work. Lots going on. Some of it is very good (new house). Some is neither good or bad, it just is (moving). Some is bad (restructuring/downsizing at work is difficult). I know that for me, change is very stressful, even if the change is something I really want and will be a positive thing when it is done. No matter how careful my planning is, it all seems to happen with the most inconvenient timing. You know how you end up with a big project at work right before you are to go on vacation. Yea that kind of timing.

I’m really evaluating how I’m choosing to face this time. In the past, my approach has best been described as “live a stately life as Cleopatra (Queen of the Nile {denial}) until the point when I am so overloaded that I fall apart into a million blithering pieces, then drag myself along to the finish line. Well, as they say in my improv group, that’s an interesting choice. Not the most effective way to go, but that’s apparently my default.

This time I’m trying to make it different. I’m trying to realize that I cannot control all of the variables in any of these situations. Heck I really can only control a couple of things about the move, and honestly I cannot control anything at work even one tiny little bit. So my lesson this summer is to control what is within my actual span of control and just release the rest.

I’m a list maker. Yes there are a ton of lists for the house. Of course there are. This year there is also a list titled “Things I Cannot Control”. I have listed on there, all the things that need to happen but that I cannot do anything about. My reasoning for this is that this tells me I have evaluated that particular item and have decided it is outside of my span of control, therefore spending any more time on it is not going to change the outcome, so it goes on this list. When I start winding myself up about things, I look at that list and if my train of though centers around items on that list, I stop myself and remind myself out loud that this is not on my workable list. The out loud part is important, I might talk about that next week a bit.

So here I sit, with a bunch of lists, but one of them is to remind me what is not my job, what I do not have control over. I need to focus on the list of my tasks. I need to be doing the stuff that I can do, not spending my time grinding on things I cannot affect. I’m finding some interesting side effects. I’m less upset in the grand scheme of things. I’m more effective (ie getting done faster) with the things that are on my to do list.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still freaking out about all of this. I have still kept Labor Day weekend completely blocked out to have a nervous breakdown, but in the mean time, I am cranking along and getting my stuff done and releasing the rest of it to the universe. Let the universe have a couple of sleepless nights, not me.

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Staring at that Blank Page

About 40 years ago, I got a little button that said “writing is easy, just stare at your typewriter until your forehead bleeds”. I thought it was funny at the time. I don’t use a typewriter any more but boy there are definitely days when I just stare at my iPad until my forehead bleeds, and still nothing happens.

We all go through cycles in our creativity. Sometimes ideas blossom all around us, everywhere we look, and other times it is as barren as a dessert. This month has become a dessert. There’s a lot going on right now. There’s a lot of stress, and stress is a thief of creativity. I have actually found myself sitting in the evening with the television on, not doing anything at all, just sitting. I never do that. I have so much that I could/should be doing, there’s no time to sit, and yet I sit.

I’m keeping the important things going. My job, for example. Some of the major commitments I’ve made. Other commitments are so far behind I will never catch up and those weigh on me. I know that these can be self fulfilling cycles: the more I sit, the less gets done, the more that weighs on me so I sit even more and so on. I also know that the opposite is true: I get something accomplished which gives me a little kick to do some more, which gets more accomplished which gives another little kick and so on.

This situation is calling for some drastic measures, so I’m going to revert back to what I call “Do One Thing”: instead of setting wildly unachievable goals for myself, just get one thing done every day. The first week or so is rather rough and I have to really talk to myself to get that one thing done, but after a week, that’s 5-6 things done, and that gets a little kick forward. The second week that will be another 5-6 things done, resulting in another kick forward. I know this is the way to get out of the slump so get one thing done.

This blog post is a good example. It is not going to change the world, it’s not riveting reading (I apologize most humbly to you, dear Reader), however it is done, and it is keeping my weekly post on track, and it is my one thing today, and I will do another thing tomorrow. There will be more posts in the future and I know I will get my creative juices flowing again, but for today, one thing will be enough.

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When life throws you a curve ball….

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…

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Two different roads: Project vs Process

I read a lot about a lot of different subjects and a LONG time ago I read an article about how people approach projects, noting that there are project people and there are process people.

Let’s first cover the types:

Project people focus on the project as a whole, and usually work to completion of one item before moving on to another item. The satisfaction is derived in a large part from the execution of the project as a whole, and the completion of each project.

Process people focus on individual parts of the process. Satisfaction is derived from doing particular tasks, and completion rarely factors into the equation. Process people often work on multiple projects at the same time, enjoying the doing more than the finishing.

I’m a process person. Oh boy am I a process person. I like to sew. I don’t necessarily like to cut but you have to cut to be able to sew. I don’t like to iron much so there’s a lot of steps I just finger press rather than use the iron. (Side note, this can have some benefits, you’d be surprised). I especially like the planning and designing part of the process. I am working on a BUNCH of quilts at the same time. I love making the first few blocks so that I can see my idea turn into something with real fabric. I enjoy quilting a lot, but you have to actually finish piecing a top to have something to quilt.

My mother was a project person. She would decide to make something (she made clothes rather than quilts), she would buy the supplies and she would finish that item before moving on to the next thing. Every now and then, if she didn’t like how the project was turning out, she might have two things going at once but usually it was one thing at a time and she finished everything.

There was a long time that we did not understand each other at all. I would derive great joy from planning a project, getting the supplies, and starting the project just to have it disappear into a box and never see the light of day again. I felt guilty about this for a long time. Most of my life I would say. I had wasted my money. I had wasted my time. I had nothing to show for it. That’s what everybody would tell me. Then I found this article and I realized that I had derived great joy from the part of the process that I performed. The money was not wasted. The time was not wasted. I didn’t have boxes to check like the project people did, but I was getting better at my chosen hobby, and most importantly, I WAS ENJOYING MYSELF.

What I find MOST fascinating about all of this, is that once I gave myself license to be a process person, and to enjoy the journey rather than the destination, I started to complete things. More things than I ever had before. I stuck with quilting. My mother assumed it was just a phase like the multitude of other hobbies I had tried, but today I’m closing in on 30 years as a serious quilter. I’ve been knitting over 50 years. That’s quite a streak I’d say, and I actually have some sweaters I’ve finished about about 45 pairs of socks. Pretty nifty for a process person.

I will always work on multiple projects at the same time. I will always start something new when I have lots of things in work but that’s OK. I’m a process person. I’m enjoying every minute of my journey, and I’m finishing the things that I really like because I like them, not because I have an obligation. I’m coming into my own as a process person and enjoying the destination.

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Analysis Paralysis: Getting yourself started

Have you ever had trouble getting started on something? A task so big that you really are just so completely overwhelmed that you don’t have a clue how to begin? You know it has to be done and some how the urgency of the task just makes the difficulty worse. Yup. I think we have all been there.

My Mother used to use the phrase “month of Sundays” and I pondered that often. I took it to mean 30 days where you have more control over your time. (I used to say nothing to do but I never have a day with nothing to do anymore). I get this. Not in a month of Sundays means that even with 30 days dedicated to nothing but this task, and I still wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of getting it done.

<insert heavy sigh here>

I have been getting more successful at dealing with this by breaking things down into chunks and working on the smaller pieces but this time I feel like I am faced by Mt. Everest and I have no idea where to begin. All this week I have been doing anything but get started. ANYTHING. I even cleaned my house. That should tell you how bad it is. I am hoping that by writing this blog post I can put enough awareness into my situation that I can wrest some kind of control and at least get started. I know if I just DO SOMETHING I can get some movement going.

I am realizing it doesn’t even really matter what I do first. This isn’t about doing the right thing first, it’s about doing anything first. It’s the words on the blank page. I did learn a long time ago when writing that if I don’t know where to start, start in the middle and go back and write the beginning later. I’m a rather structured person, so I tend to think that there is a prescribed order to things. “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start”. Yea. As my programming career grew, I moved from structured languages where you wrote everything in the order it was to happen, to languages where you wrote snippets that could be called any time. My head exploded in a class when my instructor told me it didn’t matter what order those were presented in, it would all still work.

As I get older, I’m starting to see that there can be a lot of value in this approach. You don’t have to start at the beginning, you don’t have to do things in order unless there is a dependency. So I really need to step outside my comfort zone on this one. I don’t have a complete list and I am overwhelmed but I am going to do something to break the log jam. Of course somebody could point out that writing this post is just another form of avoidance on my part, but it’s more like the pep talk in the locker room before the big game (just how many different metaphors can I stuff in this post?). I’m talking myself up so I can run out on the field and start.

Ask me in a week if I started.

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To everything there is a season….

Whether you are more familiar with the song by the Byrds, or the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) there is a time for everything. The song by the Byrds has been stuck in my head for days now, especially the next to last line: A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

My adult life has been hallmarked by a major level of over commitment. I always have way too much going on, way too much to do and never enough time. I manage to meet most of my commitments, but I’m realizing (as I get older, as we all do) that the one thing I am regularly short changing is myself. I never leave myself enough time for me.

A major health crisis at the end of 2016 into 2017 left me with time when I was forced to sit and do next to nothing and it was eye opening. The creative spark that had been missing for a long time started to glow again. The need to write made itself known again. As I got better, I found that the push to over commit was still there. Things needed to be done and for some reason I had decided they needed to be done by me. I am now seriously questioning that stance.

Yes there are a lot of things that need to be done. There will always be a lot of things to be done, and unless I manage to move to Venus where a day lasts 243 earth days (trivial fact here, a year on Venus is only 224.7 days so a year is shorter than a day), I’m NEVER going to have enough time to DO ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD plus all the things that I want to do just for me.

I find myself at a huge crossroads.

I need to digress again. I’m a quilter. I support the Dallas Quilt Show heavily. I rarely enter anything and have often made the joke that the only ribbon I will ever get is the one that says Participant on it. A few years ago I realized that the last thing I put time into was my entry. I did everything else in the world and left my stuff for last so I was rushing it and didn’t give myself time to do a proper job. That’s no way to work at all. The last few years I’ve solved that by not entering anything but I don’t think that’s a solution either. I love to make things. I love to create. I love to have an idea in my head become fabric, and I want the things I create to match up to the vision I have in my head and if I’m going to do that I need to give myself enough time. That means some other things are going to have to give.

The other big lesson I learned out of the Year of Illness is that sometimes it’s ok to sit and do nothing. My parents were raised in the 20’s and 30’s, and as such had some very distinct views on the evil that is sitting and doing nothing. To this day it is VERY hard for me to sit and watch a movie on TV without having something in my hands (sewing or knitting usually) so that the time is not wasted. When I was sick, I could justify the time, because the productive thing I was doing was healing. Now that I’m ‘well’ again, I find myself back in the old trap of I have to be busy 100% of my waking moments.

I think, for the first time in my life, I am realizing that there has to be a balance. A balance between busy and rest. A balance between me and the world. A time to every purpose under heaven. I need to figure out what really matters to me and then build a life that supports that including time for myself to recharge. The biggest luxury I can imagine is giving myself time to recharge. It will be difficult to change a lifetime habit but I think it will be worth it and I can’t wait to see what comes out of the change.

Book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

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Ringing in the new year!

I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, I never have been. That being said, there is still an undeniable sense of finality at the end of the year, and a sense of promise to what lies ahead. Like walking through a door from one room to another, I can sense the new year opening in front of me, with all sorts of things to discover.

We’ve already established that I’m a list maker. I have lists and I have lists of lists. I even have bulleted sublists on my lists. That’s how I organize my thoughts, and get my virtual ducks in a row. There’s a meme out there, “I don’t have ducks and they aren’t in a row. I have squirrels and they are at a rave”. Oh how I get that. So my lists are getting my squirrels to at least swing dance rather than running a mosh pit. But I digress.

So this time of year, I see a lot of people making huge resolutions for the new year, and very rarely does anything come of it. To my thinking, a resolution without a plan is like a tent without poles. It’s there but it’s not going to stand up to anything or be very useful. Last year I wanted to accomplish 2 things. I wanted to get healthier (by way of losing weight) and I wanted to quilt one quilt top a month of mine. At the end of the year, I have lost over 50 lbs and drastically improved my quality of life, and I got two quilts done, and those were gifts. I didn’t quilt anything of my own.

Looking closer at the situation over the last few weeks, I realized that the weight loss goal I approached with a detailed plan. I signed up for a lifestyle program and I had a coach and I had weekly check ins. There was a lot of information and each week I evaluated progress towards my goal and made adjustments to what I was doing to keep forward progress. Between January and June, I lost 45 pounds. I lost another 5 since the end of July. I am keeping myself on track by continuing the weekly evaluation and tracking my weight and keeping an eye on my lifestyle.

The quilting, never got past the point of “I want to quilt one top a month”. That’s a grand statement. I did not have a list of tops that needed quilting. I did not dig out anything in the fabric room. I did not make sure that I had backing fabric pieced and ready to load on the long arm. So while I thought the goal I set was reasonable (one quilt every 4 weeks off the long arm) NOTHING happened. I see now that this year, I need not only the resolution of quilting my own things but I need to put the framework in place to see that it happens. I need to tee up 3 or 4 quilts right away that have backing already to go so that I can load them on the long arm with little extra effort. once I get one or two done, I need to keep getting things ready in the pipe line so that I always have several things all prepped and ready to quilt. I also need to put time on my calendar dedicated to quilting with the long arm. Rather than relying on an open weekend here and there to miraculously turn into a quilting marathon, I need to schedule time regularly. I am confident based on how the weight loss last year went, that with a detailed plan and good preparation, this year I will make my long arm goal a reality too.

So what resolutions have been rumbling around in your head? Are they resolutions or are they actually plans? What steps can you take to get those tent poles out and get your tent setup for success?

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Organization Helps

In one of my lectures I make a joke that Organization is a four letter word for me. I like the idea of organization. Ok I love the idea of organization. I see pictures on Instagram of neatly organized shelves, with everything in its place – even the little knickknacks that make the space attractive. There are whole magazines dedicated to getting your virtual scattered sheep into their corral. A whole industry if you take into account stores like The Container Store, who cater to ways to get yourself together.

This has been a life long challenge for me and I’m realizing it boils down to several key points, not just one thing.

First, you will have no help of getting or staying organized if you have too much stuff for your space. Dolly Parton once famously said (when the seam of her dress split) that you can’t expect to put 10 lbs of mud in a 5 lb sack. She’s right and it applies to my sewing room too. If I have more stuff than could literally be crammed on the shelves, it is always going to spill over, there will always be piles and there will never be the sense of calm organization in my space.

Second, it does not have to be fancy or expensive to get organized, but there needs to be a system. Using boxes or containers to get little items under control can go a long way. Putting like things all together in one place rather than scattering them all throughout the space will help keep it hanging together. I have one HUGE exception to this rule in my sewing space, and that is making project boxes for on going works in progress as self sufficient as possible. That means for a particular project, everything needed in that box – the fabric, the pattern, the thread, specialty rulers, and other tools like triangle papers etc required for that project. This gets me two benefits. One, when I am sewing at home, and I only have 30 minutes, I don’t spend 25 of those minutes looking for the correct ruler, I just pull the box and get busy. Second, when I go to sew on the road (retreat or small group), I know if I grab the project box, along with my sewing machine, I will have everything I need to work on that project. It streamlines packing for the retreat as well as ensuring when I get to the retreat I haven’t forgotten a critical tool or component of the project.

Third, and possibly the most important, organizing is like laundry. It is a myth that you can get organized and then you are DONE. Organization has to be a constant and ongoing activity. Every time something is touched, it has to be put back into its spot. Everything has a place and everything in its place is a Victorian proverb and how right it is. That is the heart of organization, so it requires a new habit of putting everything back in its place when I am done using it. Even with my project boxes, when I stop working on a project, EVERYTHING needs to go back in the same box so that the next time I reach for it, it is all there ready and waiting for me. If several projects use the same tools, I will look at investing in multiples of an item if they are not expensive, so that I can have one in every box. My time is very valuable and more than one retreat has gotten sidetracked because I left something critical at home. A couple of dollars for a duplicate tool is worth it to me if it can maximize the time I sew.

Putting all these ideas into practice is an ever evolving project. I still have way too much stuff. The other day I was looking for 9 yards of a blue fabric. I can’t find it. Still haven’t found it. NINE YARDS of fabric is not a trivial amount. I am not picking it up in a handful of other things. I have no clue where it is. That tells me I have a long way to go on my push to streamline my stash and make it so that I can find things. My project boxes are setup and are working pretty well, I just need to maintain them as I work on different things through the year. I will get there, and when I do you can bet there will be a couple of photos on Instagram of that beautiful moment when it all comes together. I will probably also take a couple of photos along the way so I can #honestcraftroom my post and show that it’s not perfect all the time.

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