Telling You What I Need To Hear

Stop being mean to yourself.

The Death of Spontaneity

I am not a keeper of schedules, nor do I follow many routines. I know, you're shocked.

This was not a problem with small children. Oh, my babies had schedules all right. Schedules they created. And schedules they changed. Randomly. With no warning. I rolled with it.

Where "rolled with it" was often synonymous with "sobbed in despair about yet another night with no sleep".

Whatever.

This parenting style has its advantages. Quite used to disruptions in their days, my boys adapt happily to traveling or sleeping in unfamiliar places. Or snacking on a granola bar when dinner is late because Mommy forgot to go grocery shopping. Again.

Whatever.

I fear my carefree, spontaneous days may be coming to an end.

Preschool, after school activities, and more challenging academics for Quake are threatening to upset my bouncy little apple cart. It is with severe trepidation that I approach such chilling things as chore charts.

Any tips for surviving this?

Fashion Friday - Anthropologie Edition

I love Anthropologie. True, none of their clothes fit me, but I can't afford them anyway!

But neither of those things has to interfere with using the Anthropologie aesthetic to inspire myself. Recently I found myself frustrated with the outfits I was creating - they felt a bit safe and stale. So I started giving myself challenges. The first one was to create outfits using lots of Anthropologie's pieces, especially in ways that expanded my use of color. I'll let you decide if I was successful...

 

In other fashion news (but not only fashion), I just discovered Gala Darling. How is it possible that I didn't know about her earlier? Now my breakin'-out-of-the-box outfits have got a whole new level of inspiration. Of course my other soul-sister-but-she-doesn't-know-it-in-a-totally-not-stalkerish-way Susannah Conway "introduced" us.

New Project 8,027

Because there are truly few things I like more than starting another project I will probably never finish!

While moving a bookcase a few weeks ago, I was once again confronted with a pile of books that I usually keep stacked separately from the others - my personal self-help/get creative/figure out what it all means shelf. Oh, the sweet sweet guilt.

I always buy these titles with the deepest resolve to do the work, make the change. But just like everywhere else in my life, I get distracted. I read a chapter or two, do the exercises, maybe even pick up a new habit. And while I'm practising this new habit for a few weeks, I manage to forget to keep reading. Oops!

I am the Queen of Deep Resolve and Crappy Follow Through.

Every time I've noticed these books in the last few years* I've told myself that one day - one day! - I'm going to work my way through all of them just for kicks. And possibly in the hope of reaching enlightenment. But mostly for kicks.

That one day is here.

I'm starting with Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose (something practical), Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets (something spiritual), and Liz Lamoreux's Inner Excavation (something more arty, plus I just got it for Christmas). Why are you looking at me like that? You mean you don't read 3 books at a time? 

I don't either. I'm actually reading 6 books right now. The other 3 don't have anything to do with my journey through the 7 levels of self-help though. Unless of course that bitch, Serendipity, decides to show up. As usual.

Only 18 more after these**!

It's OK, you can roll your eyes. I do it all the time...

*Yes, that's right, I said 'years'.

**These original 21 titles do not include the subset of writing books I've collected. I decided if I could get through the others, I might torture myself with those. One impossible mountain at a time, people!  

Remember When...Flipping Edition

This weekend Monkey Man left the TV on when he and boys left to go fishing. I didn't mind because Jack Hanna was coming on, and there were wombats involved. Wombats! Eeeee, the way the waddle on their short little legs! Wombats!

Then when I went upstairs to do my email/shower/start the laundry, I left it on too. Because I am a giant electricity hoarder. And when I came back downstairs there was an infomercial on about how to make money in the current real estate market, otherwise known as "The Best Way to Get Rich is Sell Other People Information on How They Might Get Rich."

It made me nostalgic for when everyone was all crazy about house 'flipping'. Oh, how I wish I could have been a part of that. Not because of the money, but because I love the idea of going into some bland house, replacing the flooring and the fixtures, putting on a coat of paint, and basically just making it look pretty and up-to-date.

I never felt like I could do much with my own house. We bought at the top of the market so any improvements felt, shall we say, "cost prohibitive". And now we're renting so it's sort of a non-issue. So I guess I'll just indulge in a little bit of remember when...

Things Other People Wrote

Feeling lazy today...OK, lazier...so I thought I'd throw out a few links to stuff that's been making me happy or thoughtful or just insanely jealous lately. I'll let you figure out which link goes with which feeling.

• The poem Why Creativity Was Invented by Samantha Reynolds
• This article about being joyful and depressed, all at the same time
• Found via a perennial favorite, How About Orange, the Color game (because I am obsessed with color) and the I Shot the Serif game (because I am a budding typography nerd apparently)
• The Bloggess - so funny I almost peed my pants (and not just because I'm 40) and now I'm angry because a) I'm only now discovering it, and b) I didn't write it
• Geeky Embroidery - 'nuff said

Serendipity is a Bitch

Serendipity. Synchronicity. Coincidence.

I'm sure the skeptics would mock me mercilessly for believing that the Universe sends us messages to help us along our way when we need it. Their insistence that these sorts of things are incredibly common is probably right. Usually we just go about our business without really noticing. Kind of like how you never seem to notice a certain kind of car on the road until you start driving one - suddenly it feels like that car is everywhere.

What matters is attention.

You may remember that I've had time management on the brain for a few months. Then approximately 3,418 items on my to-do list failed to get done this week causing me much frustration. A few days ago I started a rough draft blog post inspired by Kate Swoboda's What Time Management And Diets Have In Common post. Then last night I read a few chapters in Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose with all sorts of tidbits about how someone like me - the type of person with approximately 3.6 million interests* - can manage to get to all of them.**

And finally this morning I responded to all of that with a giant yawn.

Because in my relationship with the Universe, I am a teenager who is too cool to listen to her mom even when she knows her mom is right.

Fine. I'm listening. {insert giant eye roll here}
...

Nothing.

Because just like the annoying teacher who tells you to look up the word you asked him how to spell,*** the Universe likes to point you in the right direction and then watch you flop about trying to figure out the rest on your own. 

She can be such a bitch.

*Give or take an order of magnitude.

**Reading this book is part of a new quest I've started that I plan to tell you about in another post. Unless I forget.

***How can you look up how to spell word in a dictionary when you need to know how to spell a word to look it up in a dictionary? How?