A little less conversation, a little more action

Summer is finally over and school is here. Hurray! Hurray!

So I promised to blog every day. I made it three days. I think the last few days (and the lack of blogging) illustrate the core of my problem. I have been telling myself all summer that the projects and personal stuff I want to work on can all happen when the kids go back to school. As soon as school started, I wanted to do IT ALL. Right NOW. Suddenly I have so much to do and so little time after a summer of so much time and so little to do. Or at least so little actual doing.

I ran into a friend at my son’s soccer game this morning and she was all “you’re so lucky! I had to work all summer and you got to go to the beach all the time!” Meanwhile, I spent the whole summer saying “ugh … I guess I’ll take the kids to the beach again.” I know, I know … I shouldn’t complain … but sometimes I still do. I think the problem is that I don’t feel I am “relaxing” at the beach, I feel like I am waiting and waiting and waiting to get to the ideas that rattle around my head.

It was cool and rainy on the last day of summer vacation and it soon turned into the rainy day - closet cleanout organizational freak-out. I guess I need my deadlines if I pick the last day of summer vacation to do what I have needed to do for months. I pulled everything out of my closet, my son’s closet and the downstairs closet where we keep everything from jackets to shoes to sports equipment. My nine-year-old daughter pointed out that we start a lot of big projects when we don’t have the time to finish them. We always have to stop for one reason or another before they are done, so nothing ends up being organized and we are always re-organizing the stuff we already sorted through. We need to be able to start and finish the job in one go. Very astute.

Aimee planning how to organize my life.

Now we are in the organizational in-between phase — where things seem worse before they get better. Every organizational blitz seems to give rise to more projects I want to take on. Should we build shelves in the closets? Do we even use any of this stuff? I am feeling really motivated. The summer seemed to be one long motivation suck … nothing got done. Nothing. Now the kids are off at school for six hours a day and my mind is full of possibilities, ideas, revelations, and regrets.

Besides making a mess in my attempts to organize and streamline everything around here I have made lots of lists and come up with lots of ideas for artsy, Etsy-able projects. I need to find more paying work. It is amazing how much more creative I feel without the constant “Mama!?” all the live long day. I can put my thoughts together and make a plan, rather than trying to grab at the random ideas that float and bounce through my mind like balloons. I have lists of what I want to do, what I need to do, what I wish I could do, what I wish I could stop doing … lists and more lists. I am really trying to write ideas down before they evaporate away, which I think will have to entail me walking around scribbling into a little notebook like a TV private eye.

I feel a little guilty and a little gleeful about my kids being at school all day. I don’t want feel like I wish I was away from them more, but after three months of never being away from them at all, I am glad to have my time back. It still doesn’t feel like enough time. The second I pick up my kids from school, the chance for me to do any of my stuff is done for the day. I need to figure out how to turn my time into productive action. I need to move from planning to doing.