Thursday 29 January 2015

Organisation! Whiteboards! MAGNITZ. And stuff.

I have been marginally more organised recently than previously. We bought magnetic whiteboards (oooh!) and whatever I can find has been stuck to it; a birthday party invitation, details of library lending times and when the books are due back, (Oh. They're late. Well, you can't be organised at everything.) term dates and special occasions for kindergarten. And a calendar hanging up above it, which I hung up in November and have continued to ignore until now when I have just realised why I put it there. The kindergarten dates have all kinds of indecipherable stuff on them like "Pfingsten" and "Gründonnerstag" but TBH all I need to know is whether they are supposed to be there or not. And I have a meal plan (this week, ignored due to a shopping mistake) and a long-term goals list.

It feels good, not perfect, but good. It took me a while to get back into the swing after new year but I feel like I might be there. And now, I have realised, I need to meal plan again.

This is something which helps: Planning out what will happen and when. It can't be too routine, I despise the idea of routine. I created a document to feed into my RandomStuff DOS program to help me make the meal plan. That kind of geekery, and randomness, pleases me.

Similarly, breaking down long term plans into manageable tasks is helpful. That's something I got from here: an article about how to beat procrastination. (Wait But Why is probably my favourite thing I have ever found on the internet.) No faffing about fancy ways of doing it. No spending hours on research or working out complex time scales. Put that research in as a step. Now break the steps down, write them in a list, and tick them off.

Thursday 22 January 2015

2015: Year of Future Planning.

So before the new year, I was ruminating on new year's plans and future plans in general.

I've alluded to this before on this blog but I've been feeling over the past 2-3 years like I've just been surviving or living week to week or day to day, very short term. I've spoken a lot online (probably in posts waiting to be finished and go live - more on that soon) about the importance of planning a future and having goals and things to work towards, but I haven't been doing this myself. I've wanted to speak to my husband and plan real futures together but haven't made time for it.

So. Anyway. A discussion tonight lead to this realisation being voiced and we tossed some ideas around and I got a little bit excited again. How can you grow as a person if you don't have anything to grow towards? We need our "sun". I can see a chink of it through the clouds, finally. And again! I'd forgotten that once I did have future plans and I had felt excited and eager for them.

He made me realise that I don't need to be able to picture myself doing something or imagine it, if it feels exciting then we are probably still young enough for it to be possible. He has also banned me from asking for help on open forums (I say banned, he's asked me to try without that first, to see what I come up with.) So far I've found some fun career planning algorithm type things online which seem much better than the ones I had to contend with 10 years ago in school career planning (I'm not sure quite why this surprised me.)

So first, sleep, because I'm exhausted. Tomorrow teaching, seeing friends, working out (I am far overdue) and then some hardcore working out of what I want from life and finding my sun again. And then I can see what steps I might be able to take to achieve it. Exciting times!