Over eight years of blogging, being honest and vulnerable with you, my reader, has been super important to me. I’ve never wanted to come across as a know-it-all or “do it like I do and you, too, can be perfect” type person. That makes me chuckle. Good thing I didn’t start blogging when I was thirty.
So in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes I got nothin.’ A blog post is due, it’s 11:50pm, and my brain is tired. If I were marginally organized about blogging, this post would have been written and scheduled two weeks ago. I’m going to get better at this, really I am. But until that happens, here’s half a blog post with three things that happened yesterday.
- We moved my desk. My office area is in the corner of a room also used for school and crafts. I had heard that your face looks better on video if you’re facing a window, so my husband and girls were recruited to rotate the desk because who doesn’t want their face to look better on video? It only took a minute to realize it wasn’t going to work with the space in the room. So they rotated the desk back where it was, with an important tweak: it was moved forward two feet, making the whole corner more spacious. This may sound silly, but having more space in the corner has been thought-provoking. By having the desk tucked away in a tiny corner, where my chair hit the cabinet behind every time I stood up, I was saying to my family and the world, “I’ll stay small, I won’t bother anyone, my business is just a little hobby.” The truth is, I’m pretty awesome (and so are you, so don’t believe otherwise), if I bother someone they’re not my tribe, and I’m pretty much a mom mogul running a hugely successful business with a smartphone in an office corner. Boom.
- I tried on five pairs of shoes. And finally got one of the last pair to fit on my foot. Except the strap’s velcro was a bit too short to fit around an ankle brace on a foot swollen from joint surgery recovery. I wanted to cry, not from sorrow or pain, but from frustration. This is a season that’s not moving fast enough for my liking. Many lessons here, apparently there are more to come. Gratitude is at the top of the list.
- I stayed up too late writing half a blog post. This, my friends, is entirely my fault. I take responsibility for the fact that I haven’t created good systems for the blog, and I’m happy to announce that “systems” are on my list of 2nd quarter business goals. My guess is that the reason for the lack of systems is emotional. Somehow my brain has managed to create negative associations with systems. I’m telling myself stories about systems being evil and hard, and I believe the stories. Fortunately that’s about to change. Time to speak life over my systems and implement simple, doable ways to accomplish tasks with less stress. This will require brain surgery (also known as neuroplasticity, the science of how thoughts change our brains)…but I’m up for it and washing to my elbows.
The danger in writing half a blog post late at night is that I’m too tired to edit and some embarrassing words might slip through. Oh well. I’ll use it as incentive to create those blog systems.
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“I’m telling myself stories about systems being evil and hard, and I believe the stories. ”
Oh, yes. This is so me. I can’t begin to tell how many systems I have determined to put in place, but I always rebel. I hate schedules and deadlines, and the very thought of them makes me defensive. The one that sticks in my memory most was a housekeeping plan that required a card file with a card for every task. It took days to map out and set up. And how long did I do it? NOT. AT. ALL. Once I had the cute little file box, I barely even opened it. I hated the thought of being tied to doing a particular task on a particular day. Hated it with a passion. I kept the cards for several years, which only added to my clutter. The only systems I have really been successful with are the ones that I imposed on other people–my children. :/
So I will be interested to hear how you succeed in learning to NOT believe this. I have tried so many times, but deep down, I’m afraid that I still don’t truly believe that systems are good for me.
I was a former elementary teacher for over 20 years and had great “systems” in my classroom. When it came to my home and raising our children, though, I struggled to apply those “systems” very readily. I did a profile (can’t remember what it was called) several years ago, and it showed that I did my best work if there was some external force pushing me to complete tasks (i.e., when I was teaching I had a principal, students, parents, etc.). Now it’s just my hubby and me at home, and we are both currently retired. I’ve found that if I have regularly scheduled activities (for example, Bible Study, get-togethers, etc.) held in my home, I do a much better job of keeping my house clean or completing other household tasks. Knowing that others will be in in my home on a regular basis is the motivating force for me to make plans and accomplish tasks on a regular basis, and I don’t need “systems” to keep me on track.
I finally found the profile I mentioned in my response above and wanted to share it with you. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s called the 4 Tendencies Quiz by Gretchen Rubin. Her New York Times bestseller book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Life, is about how we can change our habits. Her website is https://gretchenrubin.com/. She, also, puts out a monthly newsletter called the Happiness Project.